Originally published June 4, 2015
For Patricia Kelly, Paradise Valley was just that – paradise. But Saturday evening turned into a nightmare she and her husband will never forget as they heard the screams for help coming from the river.
Since moving to Wimberley a few years back, Patricia Kelly thought her neighborhood was like an old time TV show. All her neighbors advised her on the local places to shop and as a whole it was like Andy Griffith’s “Mayberry.”
“Double the niceness” of anywhere else, she said.
But that night will forever haunt her.
She and her husband were headed for the car when they heard a woman’s frantic screams coming from the river.
“Somebody help us!” Kelly stopped but was urged to get in the car.
“If we try to help, it will be us too,” her shocked husband said.
“I’ll always remember that,” she said as she broke into tears.
Very few had the night of the Kelly’s, but there were many displaced throughout the night.
Heather and Larry Hernandez, also in Paradise Valley, were awakened by loud banging on the garage door. The rising waters had dented the aluminum door.
When they saw what was happening, they climbed onto the roof and waited tobe rescued.
Neighbors Joel and Suzanne Moore from a few doors down, tell the same story. They opened their front door at about 4:30 a.m. and were hit with water. When they left for Cypress Creek Church, the emergency shelter, they also heard the frantic lady’s screams, but they also knew they could not help. Only a little sleep came that night.
According to Wimberley Fire Chief Carroll Czichos, one of his official contacts in Blanco called about 5:30 or 6 p.m. on Saturday night with the news that the river had grown like he had not seen anything like it before.
“You’ve got a problem.” He alerted everyone he could, but not expecting the Blanco to be anything the size that it became.
The next step was to wait. When the wall of water hit town, there were rescues to be made. The water res- cue teams from College Station, Boerne, San Antonio, San Marcos, and boat teams from all over Texas came within a six-hour window.
The calls started coming in and the rescue efforts were underway. They received 84 calls in 2.5 hours.
Many were stranded on roofs, some inside, from one end of the Blanco to the other. They couldn’t reach everyone because of islands that popped up of asphalt, road debris and trees. But perseverance in the wet cold darkness did have its rewards. The most memorable being the rescue of eight ladies on top of a roof. Chaotic to say the least, but the Wimberley Command Post did its job as did the rescue teams, something that they all had been trained to do.
At the 7A Resort, proprietor and Wimberley Councilman John White, started knocking on doors at about the time he got the word from Fire Chief Czichos. They told guests at the lodge to grab their belongings, load up their cars and move to the 7A parking lot. For 70 years the water never reached the cabins.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. I stood at the highest point that it had been in previous floods. It’d never reached here at the swimming pool. The pool was covered quickly. I moved back five feet and said, ‘You can’t come here,’ but it did, and I moved back another five feet. I said ‘You can’t come here’ and kept moving back. It finally stopped at the office,” quite a ways up on dry land, up and away from the river.
Night Manager, Kaylee Ornalac agreed. The rise of the river was “insane.”
Seventeen cabins were washed away, the ones closest to the river. Times that by summer days and weekends, “that means 2500 fewer people.” Not only a business loss for 7A, but also the money the tourists spend in town.
Down the road, Sally Pool was relaxing in her house.
“About 10 p.m. I got a call from the San Marcos weather advisory, that everyone on Ranch Road 12 should evacuate immediately. I got my renter, grabbed the dogs and cats and got in the car. We drove to our neighbor’s barn, and stayed in the upstairs apartment. We watched the river climb the steps.” They survived with only a cleanup of their house.
For some, the nightmares of the flood will fade with the waters of the Blanco River. For others, they may stay for a lifetime.
