Residents brace for more flooding as Texas river crests

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) – Residents of some rural southeast Texas counties braced for more flooding on Monday along a river that is expected to crest at a record level just two years after it had run dry in places because of drought.

National Weather Service meteorologists predicted that the Brazos river would crest at 53.5 feet by midday Tuesday in Fort Bend County, three feet above the previous record and topping a 1994 flood that caused extensive damage.

During four days of torrential rain, six people have died in floods along the Brazos, which runs from New Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico. A Brazos River Authority map shows all 11 of the reservoirs fed by the Brazos at 95 to 100 percent capacity.

A man whose body was recovered late Sunday from a retention pond in the Austin area near the Circuit of the Americas auto racing track appeared to be one of two people reported missing earlier, said Travis County sheriff’s spokeswoman Lisa Block.

There have been reports of others missing in Travis County, and crews will resume searching Tuesday, but Block said there’s no confirmation yet of additional missing people.

Four of the six dead were recovered in Washington County, located between Austin and Houston, said County Judge John Brieden. Lake Somerville, one of the Brazos reservoirs, was “gushing uncontrollably” over the spillway, threatening people downriver. Two of the bodies were found Saturday in different parts of the county, Brieden said.

About 40 people were rescued from late Sunday to Monday from homes in a low-lying neighborhood flooded with up to three feet of water in Simonton, a town in Fort Bend County with about 800 residents. Aerial photos taken Sunday showed large swaths of the county under water.

The county had set up a pumping system to divert the water from the Simonton neighborhood, which sits on a flood plain. But the water levels overpowered the system, according to Beth Wolf, a county spokeswoman.

Wolf said any additional rain in southeast Texas would be a problem.

“The ditches are full, the river’s high, there’s nowhere else for that water to go,” she said.

Further south in Rosenberg, about 150 households had been evacuated by Monday, and city officials were coordinating with the county’s office of emergency management to have rescue boats in place, according to spokeswoman Jenny Pavlovich. In neighboring Richmond, a voluntary evacuation order was in place.

Flood warnings across Texas remained in effect Monday though only isolated rainfall was expected in parts of the southeast.

Elsewhere, authorities continued searching for the body of an 11-year-old boy who fell into a Kansas creek and is presumed dead. Relatives have identified the boy as Devon Dean Cooley, who disappeared Friday night in Gypsum Creek.

Devon’s family, in a statement Monday, thanked firefighters for their tireless efforts to find the boy. The family planned to hold a cookout Monday evening to feed the rescue crews, followed by a candlelight vigil.

Tropical Depression Bonnie weakened near the South Carolina coast although it accounted for a wet Memorial Day holiday weekend in the area.

The depression fell apart early in the day about 45 miles north of Charleston, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Bonnie dropped about 8 inches of rain in southern South Carolina on Sunday, closing the southbound lanes of Interstate 95 about 20 miles north of the Georgia state line for about 16 hours.