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CNN Live Sunday
Drier Weather in Forecast for Central Texas
Aired July 07, 2002 - 18:15 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Drier weather is in the forecast for central Texas as devastating flood waters start to recede. CNN's Ed Lavandera is in New Braunfels where some residents are returning to their homes. Ed, how's it going out there?
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, it's starting to look a lot better for a lot of people in terms of the amount of flood water here. Last night if you'd have been standing here, you'd have actually been under water.
The flood waters reached on this house, in particular, up to about the bottom of the windows here and this house was built on stilts here, but this was a garage area and the flood waters completely blew everything away here. So the folks were able to salvage much of what was upstairs in the house, although there are a lot of people now who are starting to get an idea of just how bad this flood damage has been to their house as they start to -- the flood waters have receded enough where a lot of people can make it back to their house.
Kelly Dean is the person who lives here. Kelly, you were just standing up the road watching all of this, watching the flood water hit the bottom of your living room area.
KELLY DEAN, HOMEOWNER: Right.
LAVANDERA: What's going through your mind when that's happening?
DEAN: Oh, it was amazing. We just kept thinking that any minute the house was just going to just take off down the river, and we'd lose everything.
LAVANDERA: You experienced the flood in '98.
DEAN: Right.
LAVANDERA: Rebuilt, put the house up on stilts.
DEAN: Yes. Yes.
LAVANDERA: Are you going to rebuild again?
DEAN: I don't know. We'll wait and find out. We'll see if the city even lets us rebuild. I think I'll probably waver back and forth. One minute I'll say yes, I want to and the next minute I don't think I want to do this a third time.
LAVANDERA: We saw several images of houses literally floating on this river downstream. As a homeowner here, that's got to be the most disheartening thing to see, I imagine.
DEAN: Oh yes, it was really scary and when the water started to rise a bit more, we thought that's what's going to happen to this house.
LAVANDERA: And talking about the neighbors, everyone pitching in around here. We've seen a lot of people helping out.
DEAN: Oh, they've been great. I mean if it weren't for the neighbors and the people just helping out. They're bringing us water. They're bringing us, letting us use their, you know, hoses to spray off the clothing, food, everything we need. They're just, they're wonderful.
LAVANDERA: Great, Kelly Dean, thank you very much. Good luck to you.
DEAN: Thanks.
LAVANDERA: About 48,000 people in the central Texas region that have been affected in one way or another because of the flood waters here, about 300 homes in the New Braunfels area alone that have been damaged by flood waters, and although this home here is looking pretty good in terms of what it looks like upstairs, for example if you look just down the way here, this is the Maxwell home. They have about three feet of mud in their living room and they've been helping out, neighbors helping them out clean out that area.
There are other people who are still waiting to get in. If you look back over here to this side over here, there's a home that is still in the flood waters as the family waits for it to recede and that house looks like it has structural damage and they're waiting to get an OK to be able just to check out what it looks like in there.
So, Carol, still not over yet here but the part that begins now is just assessing the damaging and figuring on how much it will take to rebuild if people will even decide to rebuild in this area or just decide to move out, Carol, back to you.
LIN: Oh, what a mess, Ed. Do any of these people qualify for flood insurance?
LAVANDERA: Well a lot of people we've spoken with say they do have flood insurance. There's also the Federal Emergency Management Association that's moving in, helping people out. In fact, we've seen them kind of going door to door; start taking the applications and beginning that process. But what a lot of people say they've been told is you're going to have to be patient that this is a long process.
The Maxwell family who live just up here were telling us last time they lived through the '98 flood and it took them about seven months to rebuild, so that's some of the issues they're dealing with. This flood water might be receding today but it's going to take a long time to get everything back to normal here.
LIN: All right, well let's see if things can stay dry for those folks while they try to clean up. Thank you very much, Ed Lavandera in New Braunfels.
LAVANDERA: You got it.
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