Texas Flooding Story

Local HAMS Respond to Texas Floods

Texas Hill Country Flooding Disaster

A description and pictures of local ham radio operators in action and how you can assist.

The pictures and words below are from Hank Ortega, KG5TKV, a member of RVRN and the Hill Country Amateur Radio Club of Kerrville, Texas.

After reading this, if you wish to directly assist the people of Kerr County Texas, we provide a link to make a donation to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, administered by the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country.

The local response was near instantaneous, from all local LEO and Fire Rescue (most of. Whom are volunteers). The local ham club was not activated, since most of these areas have adequate police and fire radios, and the dispersed services had their hands full.

In areas with sparse population, there are still hundreds to thousands of individual dwellings and large camps in the canyons. Very little cell signal is available. There are some spots our Repeater doesn’t reach, due to topography, of canyons and dells (hollers in the east).

the ground is an ancient reef, so made up of mostly Limestone. Our water table is a Karst formation, granite is rare, and topsoil is thin. The river bottom is mostly hard, bare limestone, sluice like in many areas. Build up of silt and muddy bottoms is thin in curves and easily stripped by the simple rise in water level, seasonally. During the drought years of the last decade, there is often diminishment to pooling or even dry beds, in many areas, with no flow for up to a year.
AS has been reported, there had been recent seeding of the area, some few counties away, to the north, during a high humidity period, associated with a high particulate content due to African dust that is carried here every year. This gives additional micro-content to the air, allowing for a multiplied effect to seeding, resulting in a storm event that does not move onward but stays and precipitates it’s contents in. One place over a very short period. The operator of the seeding company denies any connection. The timing and conditions are questionable.

In any event, a huge collection of water drained off of all the tributaries in a very short time, filling the upper canyon with a wall of downward moving water up to 30 feet or more in. Places.It moved at a high rate of speed, and overshot river banks, in places, causing flash flooding and overwhelming homes and camps in moments.

Several flash flooding warnings had been announced, including increasing level of urgency, throughout the night into the early morning. Nobody in Camp Mystic heard any warning, and no night watch had been set.They were completely taken unawares.

Ham: While the immediate rollout of local forces and later (though timely) rollout of supporting forces responded in masse, no cal was made for ham radio support to respond to the EOC. This does not mean the hams weren’t ready to respond: Everybody turned on their radios immediately, singed on as monitoring, but not official call for Sky warn or ARES/RACES was made. The EOC was fully staffed, otherwise. Day two, Skywarn was activated, and it was determined through that the one of our club members had been awakened by water in his van, at one of the low lying campgrounds. He was able to simply start his rig, and back. Out, then drove to the local VFD in Ingram. He provided timely reports of ongoing searches and water levels, especially when a second surge of water was reported to be coming.

Day 3 continued with Skywarn, and no AREAS deployment, until we received a warning order to deploy to Cofmort TX. However by midnight that changed to Deployment to Sisterdale TX, where the ARES and Kendal County EOC had moved. Tuesday Day. 4, 8 of us arrived, and along with four members of Kendal County Radio Society, we were assigned to provide Ham Radio (2M) coverage for each of 13 teams. There were 10 walking teams of Fire and LEO, plus two Dog Teams and one boat team. Searchers were exploring a stretch of River between Sisterdale and Beorne, TX, where the river makes a very large oxbow, traveling through a deep canyon. the ground is rugged, barely accessible, and all on private land. There are very few roads, in the areas.

My team was a combined boat and walking crew. Four in the raft, and 4 walking, they divided, and dropped the boat in upstream, then dropped the walking crew downstream and met in the middle. It took some 5 hours to complete the route.

Teams arrived, separated by about an hour, following the Raft team. First, a Team of State Park enforcement officers, followed by a dog team made up of 4 women, and one cadaver dog.

Following the dog team, a group of Fish and Game officers went downstream, as well. Everybody returned safely, in spite of heat, humidity, and arduous work.

By 5:30 we were released, to be replaced by a team from San Antonio.

Today, HCARC is standing by, but there are no active call-ups for the ham club.

Hank KG5TKV

Louise Hayes park in normal times. Headed south from city center.

During peak food flood Left end of bridge is viewpoint from previous image Looking toward South, highway 16, Wells Fargo bank, Parking lots full all on right of image