More rain pounds Texas as residents try to clean up

PARKER COUNTY, Texas — At Horseshoe Bend along the Brazos River in Parker County, residents hope their luck holds.

Authorities say the flooded Brazos has crested at the evacuated North Texas subdivision and the floodwaters have begun to recede — for now.

County emergency management spokesman Joel Kertok says the Brazos River Authority closed the floodgates on the Possum Kingdom Lake dam upstream, allowing the river to crest at 23.6 feet about noon Thursday, almost 3 feet above flood stage. He said floodwaters lapped at the foundations of 11 homes but rose no further, and the river had fallen to 22.74 feet by 3 p.m. Thursday, about 2 feet above flood stage, and was expected to fall below flood stage about midnight Thursday.

There's a big "if" in the forecast, though. Kertok says severe thunderstorms were expected to develop west of the area Thursday evening. If the drop heavy rain on the lake or upstream, and if the Possum Kingdom flood gates reopen, the river levels would rise again downstream.

Richard Pate has lived in Horseshoe Bend for 14 years. He stayed in a Weatherford hotel when Parker County officials asked residents to voluntarily evacuate Wednesday. He came home early Thursday morning to check on his garden.

"It's almost completely under water," Pate said, but things looked better than he expected. Still, "I'm going to stay another night away," he said.

The storms that produced the flooding were part of a system that stretched from Mexico into the central USA. Emergency officials have reduced the number of missing people in Houston from Monday night's flash flooding from two to one.

That was after they determined Thursday that one of the bodies recovered a day earlier turned out to be the second passenger missing from a capsized Houston Fire Department rescue boat.

That reduces the number of people counted as missing statewide from the Memorial Day weekend flooding to at least 14. Twenty-three are known dead, including 19 in Texas, with seven of those in the Houston area.

Two more bodies have been recovered from flooded central Texas streams, and authorities have added five more people to the list of the missing.

Officials in Blanco County said Thursday that the body of 42-year-old Zachary Jones of Blanco was found inside his vehicle along the Blanco River early Sunday.

Blanco County emergency management spokesman Ben Oakley says the body of an unidentified man was found Thursday off Ranch Road 32 in the southeastern part of the county. Oakley says an autopsy will be needed to determine the person's identity.

Oakley also said for the first time that five people are missing in Blanco County. That's in addition to the 10 people already counted as dead and eight missing in central Texas flooding.

The National Weather Service says hail, tornadoes and thunderstorms are possible across the southern Plains Thursday evening and that flooding remains the greatest threat for areas that have received record rainfall.

Steve Goss, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., says much of the area from western Kansas to West Texas should prepare for thunderstorms later Thursday that will be intense and slow moving. He says the storms could dump up to 3 inches of rain on some areas.

Much of Texas and Oklahoma have received record rainfall this month.

Weather service officials in areas of Texas already hit by heavy rains say the threat of thunderstorms will persist throughout the weekend, and that there is a 50% chance of them in the Houston, San Antonio and Austin areas.

Normally dry west Texas got into the act Thursday. Charles Aldrich, a National Weather Service meteorologist, says about 3 inches of rain fell Thursday in Shallowater, a city of about 2,500 residents about 60 miles east of the New Mexico border. A section of Interstate 27 was closed in one of the states driest regions.

Nearby Lubbock got another 1.6 inches of rain, bringing its monthly total to 10.9 inches. Aldrich says more rain is possible later Thursday, which could push Lubbock past its May record of 12.69 inches, which was set in 1941.

Students of Texas Tech University in Lubbock took to Twitter to complain about their electronic devices being damaged by water leaking into their buildings.

Southeast of Houston, where seven people were killed in flooding overnight Monday, a family along the San Jacinto River was rescued after water surrounded their home Thursday. The river isn't expected to crest until late Friday morning.

A flood warning continued for the west fork of the San Jacinto near Porter, according to the National Weather Service. Experts says the river to crest near 31 feet and remain above 24-foot flood levels through the weekend.

Elsewhere, officials say low-lying homes along the Colorado and Brazos rivers may also experience flood conditions this weekend as the rivers continue to rise one to two more feet in certain areas.

And in central Texas, crews resumed the search for eight people feared dead after the swollen Blanco River smashed through Wimberley, a small tourist town between San Antonio and Austin, over the Memorial Day weekend.

Four dead have been recovered in Hays County, including the unidentified body of a boy late Wednesday evening. A statement says it's unclear whether the child is on the county's list of those missing from the storm.

Aerial crews are searching for the missing using drones, geographic information system mapping and thermal imaging. Many areas are still not accessible by search crews due to damage.

Hays County emergency management coordinator Kharley Smith says with more rain expected Thursday night debris fields could shift, complicating efforts to find entangled victims, including several family members from Corpus Christi.

Representatives from the Charba, McComb, Carey and Shultz families gathered in Corpus Christi to thank those who have helped with search and relief efforts. They said that even through such a difficult time, they have found strength in the kindness of others.

On Wednesday, the body of Michelle Charba was found. Her two children remain missing.

Joe McComb said his son Jonathan McComb was hoping his wife Laura and two children might still be found safe. Jonathan McComb was injured as the house they were staying in was washed away and smashed into a bridge. He ended up 12 miles downstream, his father said.

As volunteers and help poured in, the state Bar of Texas set up a free legal hotline to assist low-income residents with issues like replacing lost documents, insurance questions, landlord issues, or any kind of scams during the recovery process.

KVUE-TV set up a gofundme page to collect money for Hays County flood victims.

President Obama pledged federal funding for affected areas Tuesday while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has declared 46 counties disaster areas.

In Miami, Obama said the flooding should serve as a reminder of the need to make the nation more resilient against natural disasters. He said climate change is affecting both the pace and intensity of storms.

"The best scientists in the world are telling us that extreme weather events, like hurricanes, are likely to become more powerful," Obama said during the first visit of his presidency to the National Hurricane Center.

"When you combine stronger storms with rising seas, that's a recipe for more devastating floods," he said.

In an interview for C-SPAN's Newsmakers, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate said he had talked with his Texas counterpart and stands ready to help once the president officially declares the area a disaster.

The Hill Country and central Texas have a greater risk of flash flooding than most regions of the USA, according to the Lower Colorado River Authority. In fact, many call the area — with its steep terrain, shallow soil and unusually high rainfall rates — Flash Flood Alley. Despite the known risk that destructive walls of water will form after heavy rains, the area has seen explosive population growth.

Fugate said that he hopes his agency will work with local officials to engineer and mitigate future losses, not simply respond to repeated flooding.

He said relying on historical data isn't sufficient. "When we go back in after disaster and help communities rebuild we want to build for future risk, not just build back to what was," Fugate said.

Population growth, population density and climate change should be considered, Fugate said, "to make sure you're actually building and rebuilding infrastructure in a way that reduces future disaster risk."

Hays County Judge Bert Cobb seemed to have the same point of view. "It's important that we remember this flood for years to come so that we don't take things lightly. One of our greatest problems has been getting people to understand how devastating a flood is. It costs lives and property. People are ... it will change them forever," he said.

Across the Red River in Oklahoma, an emergency official says the state is still trying to get a sense of how many residents were displaced or left homeless by the storms and flooding.

Keli Cain, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, said Thursday that several bridges that service main roads remain flooded in Marshall County, along Oklahoma's border with Texas, and that some residents are effectively cut off. Atoka and LeFlore counties are also still dealing with the storm fallout.

Cain says some people who had to evacuate their homes in the past few days haven't been able to return and that the flood threat persists due to swollen waterways.

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation says nearly 30 roads in at least 18 mostly rural counties remain closed due to flooding or damage.

Contributing: KHOU-TV, Houston; KVUE-TV, Austin; KIII-TV, Corpus Christi, Texas, and The Associated Press