‘We’re going to drown’: Flash flooding displaces Fort Worth families, damages homes
Editor’s note: This story was updated with comments from the American Red Cross.
Sara Lucio fought her way through charging, waist-high water Saturday, terrified she could die in the flash flood that engulfed her southeast Fort Worth home.
The water started pooling in the front yard, and at first it looked innocent, Lucio said. But it rose rapidly past her porch to the front door, where it began pouring into the house. Within in a few minutes it was creeping past her ankles and, soon, it was at her waist. With the front door barred by towels, she and her daughter, Laura, were forced to go through the back door.
Outside, Lucio said she couldn’t see the ground as she waded through the rushing water, tripping on debris underneath. She clung to a fence, pulling her way to the front yard, where they sought refuge on top of a sedan until Fort Worth firefighters took them to safety.
“I could feel my knees shaking as I was trying to run against that hard water,” she said Monday as she surveyed flood damage from her kitchen. “It was so scary. I thought ‘Oh my God, we’re going to drown because I don’t know how to swim.’”
Across the street, her eldest daughter, Elida Lucio rushed to wake her own kids as water began seeping through their floorboards.
“The kids were screaming, the baby was crying and I was in a panic,” she said.
On Monday, Elida Lucio and her husband were stripping up carpet and pulling furniture and other possessions from their home. With floors still wet, Elida Lucio said she was worried mold would soon creep into the house, but that’s a problem for later. As of Monday afternoon, calls to the American Red Cross had not been answered, and she didn’t know where the large family would stay.
“We may have to wing it,” she said.
The Red Cross couldn’t immediately be reached by the Star-Telegram Monday. On Tuesday spokeswoman Renee Felton said the Red Cross had helped two families in the neighborhood and was attempting to reach the Lucio family.
Next door, Curtis Johnson took a break from stripping the flooring from his home. As water began flooding the house, his wife and three kids, ages 6, 8 and 11, sought shelter in the attic while waiting for firefighters, he said.
In the yard, seven of his cars, including two classics — a Plymouth Fury II and Fury III, both from 1965 — flooded. Inside one Plymouth, dark dirt stains marked the white vinyl doors where water had reached almost to the window. The same powerful stormwater the Lucios waded through lifted one car parked in the street and left it against the fence of Harris Temple Church of God.
The car was towed Sunday by the city, he said.
“So I’ve got pay $300 to get it back on top of all of this,” Johnson said.
The violent flash flood came after a sudden downpour Saturday afternoon that drenched parts of Dallas-Fort Worth, beginning just after 5 p.m. In the nearly 30 years the Lucio family has lived in the 1300 block of Powell, Sara Lucio couldn’t recall another time flash flooding had been so strong. Nearly everything in her home was destroyed, she said.
On Sunday, the National Weather Service estimated 2.8 inches fell in parts of the city, especially in the southern and eastern areas. Rainfall was sporadic across the Metroplex, meteorologist Daniel Huckabysaid. At DFW International Airport, less than a third of an inch fell, but near TCU, reports were closer to 2 inches.
With an unseasonably wet spring, the ground has become saturated, he said, increasing the danger for flash flooding.
“With an event like this the runoff is magnified,” Huckaby said. “That’s when we see the worst flooding.”
The city had identified the area of southeast Fort Worth on the edge of the Morningside as a potential high water area with a history of street flooding, Greg Simmons, assistant director of public works, wrote in an email. The affected homes sit slightly lower than neighboring houses on the same block and are near stormwater drains.
While the flooding reports from Saturday will be used to prioritize storm water system upgrades, the city doesn’t have plans for flood mitigation in the area, Simmons said.
Across Fort Worth, flash flooding has become a growing problem. From developments near Randol Mill Road in east Fort Worth to the historic neighborhood of Arlington Heights, the city’s stormwater system is being hit more frequently with larger amounts of water, and the aging pipes can’t keep up.
More than a third of the storm drainage inside Loop 820 is more than 50 years old, built before development blocked water from seeping into the ground. The cost to bring the system up to date is more than $1 billion, according to the city’s estimate.
The Fort Worth stormwater system is almost entirely supported by the fees on water bills. The fees amount to $10 million to $12 million a year, though the city issued $150 million in bonds to address stormwater issues between 2007 and 2012.
Two large storm drains collect water in front of the Lucio and Johnson homes. Several more are a block away at East Harvey and Beverly Avenues, where Donnie Craven, Ibby Mays and their mother climbed onto their roof to escape Saturday’s flash flood.
Craven, who grew up in the house where the family has lived since the 1970s, described the churning water as “ocean waves” and guesses that stormwater drains had become blocked or inundated with water.
“It’s like we became a lake,” he said.
This story was originally published June 4, 2019 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘We’re going to drown’: Flash flooding displaces Fort Worth families, damages homes."
