The city of Austin begins to cleanup after severe flooding washes through the community
(ABC 6 News) – With a break from the heavy rain, residents in the city of Austin finally began to clean up on Sunday after flooding washed through the community.
Torrential down pours quickly turned into a natural hazard as the Cedar River spilled over its banks.
“There is a little bit of damage, the roads are closed, there’s going to be some recovery that has to take place but it’s pretty daunting to see what Mother Nature can dish out,” Jarrod French said.
This wasn’t the city’s first rodeo with flooding as many remembered the one in 2004.
While many say this go around wasn’t as bad, it still posed some problems.
It even caused some people to take a risk.
“I ended up having to actually drive through the water to get my car to some higher ground because I was worried we weren’t be able to get to it later on if the water level kept rising,” Justin Hamilton said.
For others, the flood altered plans and made them more conservative.
“We saw, we were getting the alerts on our phone that the I-90 had closed and so we just decided it was better to be safe than sorry and we decided to stay home, and there were some roads even to get to work which were closed so it hasn’t been a huge impact, but it has made it harder to get around,” French said.
The flooding cut off access to some roads. Parts of the I-90 business loop was closed off to respond to the flood.
Even though this flood didn’t reach the level of the flood in2004, Mayor Steve King credits the city of Austin for their investment in flood mitigation to make sure the flood didn’t get out of hand.
“Those efforts and that investment the city of Austin has made the last 30 years has really paid off, where you do drive around yes there is going to be some high water climbing over the banks into parking lots or into continued flood plains, but the outcome is far better than what it would be had we not invested in those kind of flood mitigation.”
The cleanup continues for people in Austin. As they reflect on the flood, they’re grateful it didn’t do any more damage.
“Yesterday down on the dam, water was about 4 to 5 feet over the dam and stuff, but it could’ve been worse,” Larry Callahan said.
The city anticipates the cleanup will take several days to be completed.
They ask everyone to remain patient and to be careful if they do go out.