The Lions Club presented its first in a new series of community forums, “The Wimberley Flood: Progress since 2015 and the Road Ahead,” attended by approximately 100 people last week. Patrick Cox, who served as the forum moderator introduced a panel of five speakers who represented the cities of Wimberley and Woodcreek and county and local emergency services. Panelists were Wimberley Mayor Pro Tem Rebecca Minnick, Woodcreek Mayor Jeff Rasco, Wimberley Emergency Medical Services Director Ken Strange, Director of Hays County Office of Emergency Services Mike Jones and Wimberley Fire Department Interim Chief Chris Robbins. Highlights of their discussions follow.
Mayor Pro Tem Rebecca Minnick “The situation in Kerrville has elevated our awareness. It helped me to understand how hard emergency communication systems are taxed in that kind of situation.
Since the 2015 flood, we’ve improved communication infrastructure but the question remains, ‘how do we get people to safety if they’re not receptive to alerts?’ All of us are receiving many alerts because of the changes we’re seeing in our environment, but we’re becoming numb to them. Creating another alert is not going to cut it.
So the City of Wimberley put emergency communications and emergency responses in our goals this year.
We considered sirens, but we can only do those in the city limits. What about the other people we need to reach? We look forward to working with EMS and the fire department to come up with an alert system that works for all of us. To accomplish this, we need county and state partners to help us find and fund ways to alert people in dire emergencies and to ensure that those methods work.
My number one takeaway from the experience in Kerrville is the need for collaboration. We all have to collaborate, not just on the costs, but on who’s in charge. We have to work out ‘How do we fix this?’ ‘How and where do we get money to pay for it?’ ‘How do we prioritize these things?’ To go it alone is absolutely untenable.”
Woodcreek Mayor Jeff Rasco “The first I knew about the 2015 flood was when a neighbor asked if my internet was down. When our son Justin drove by to say he’d been making swift water rescues all night long, I had to ask him what was going on.
In 2021, the storms that brought ‘snowmageddon,’ impacted Woodcreek residents. People helped one another by driving their ATVs around with plumbing equipment, firewood and other supplies, not because we did a great job of sending out an emergency alert, but because we’re good neighbors. What we learned was that we needed to do a better job of communicating. We put together a citizens Emergency Management Committee who came back with a report of 10 recommendations. To date, we’ve only been able to accomplish two of them.
After ‘snowmageddon,’ we had a hail storm that decimated the city. The Hays County Office of Emergency Services helped us get things cleaned up and to pay for it.
Like everyone else, Kerrville’s July 4 flood was a shot across the bow for us. While we don’t have the threat of flooding, we are vulnerable to wildfires. So we began asking the question, ‘How can we put water where it’s needed to combat wildfires?’
Until we get those kinds of measures in place, we’re teaching residents who to call in an emergency and to encourage them to check on their neighbors. This year we’ve hit the ground running exploring and implementing ways to collaborate with other services. We thank EMS, Wimberley Fire, Hays County Emergency Services and the City of Wimberley for being there and to let them know that Woodcreek is working with them.”
Wimberley EMS Director Ken Strange “The 2015 flood was horrible. EMS is responsible for 142 square miles and that night was devastating to me, my team and all the first responders. What I hope you’ve heard tonight from Wimberley and Woodcreek is that they have limited funds. They can only do so much and it takes a long time for the government to help.
I know that’s hard to hear. Maybe you think, ‘I’ll just call 911,’ but 911 isn’t going to work because phone services are down and we’re going to be busy. EMS has only two ambulances at any given time.
When Jeff said that Woodcreek wasn’t affected by the 2015 flood, I beg to differ. We were all affected by that flood. We didn’t have a grocery store, internet, phone service and the roads were shut down for days. We were an island until the Blanco River bridge was repaired.
If you don’t take anything else from this forum, I want you to go home and write down what it takes for you, your family, your pets and your neighbors to live for 72 hours. If you don’t have food, water, food for your animals, the medication you need, and a way to stay warm or cool, you’re way behind. Think things through. If you buy a generator, you’ll need to know how to fuel it, how to start it, and to ensure you have fuel on hand and that both the generator and the fuel are where you left it.
There are going to be other devastating situations in our area and you have to be able to take care of yourself. Plan, do research and learn. We have an emergency preparedness fair every year. Attend that.”
Director of Hays County Office of Emergency Services Mike Jones “What Rebecca, Jeff and Ken said is right. All of us have limited resources. I remember talking to a young lady two days after the flood. She said there was an elderly man stuck in his house who needed the fire department. I said, ‘Everyone needs the fire department. What that couple needs is you.’
Three days after the flood, we created a multi-agency Resource Center in this very room. Since then, as a county, we’ve done much to ensure we have more processes and assets in place. When the flood occurred, it was Carney Smith, myself and TJ Brown. Now I’m a GIS specialist. I’ve got a planner, a certified program coordinator and we have a robust Community Emergency Response Team. More than 400 CERT volunteers are active in the county now, and there are two classes coming up in October. If you want to be part of a disaster network, take the CERT training. You’ll learn how to take care of your neighbors so we don’t have to deploy responders who can be out there saving lives.
Since the flood, we have a device that creates a cellular network that gives us 12 square miles of cell coverage and 500 meters of data. We now have five flood watch cameras in strategic locations. We added 30 flood monitoring systems, but we need more. I have a grant out there with the General Land Office to capture another $2 million from 2015 flood money that was not used. If the commissioner’s court approves it this year, we’ll have four Perry Weather systems deployed to parks that alerts people to bad weather.
The Code Red emergency notification system that we used in 2015 didn’t work as well as we wanted. Now we use the WarnCentralTexas. org system. Register so that you receive those alerts.
We’re doing our best with what tax dollars we can glean from the county. But we’re limited. At the end of the day it’s the responsibility of households to have preparations in place. If you prepare, you may not need us.”
Wimberley Fire Department Interim Chief Chris Robbins “In 2015 Wimberley Fire was a volunteer organization. We thrived with community members who were willing to come out after hours, after work, after child care, to support the response we needed. In 2020 we began transitioning to a career organization and today we have six people ready to respond, 24 hours a day.
Over the last five years, Wimberley Fire and Wimberley EMS have been performing at their highest level ever. For a number of years, Wimberley Fire has been responding to Wimberley EMS calls to support them and now Wimberley Fire has individuals attending paramedic school.
When there is a flood event, highly-trained individuals, capable of multiple responses, answer the call. We perform swift water rescues with our trained rescue swimmers, and perform boat operator rescues employing a full gamut of skills. When you call 911, you’re getting the apex of what a response should look like.
For the road ahead, we’re preparing to build Fire Station #2 in partnership with WISD. That station, still in the design and development stage, will be on Blue Hole property and will house additional EMS and Fire personnel. When completed, we’ll have two strategically placed stations that will give us the ability to respond to different kinds of disasters more quickly.”
