(Seguin) — While Guadalupe County avoided the catastrophic flooding experienced in parts of the Texas Hill Country last week, emergency officials say the county still experienced several days of dangerous weather that kept first responders on high alert.
That’s according to Guadalupe County Emergency Management Coordinator and Fire Marshal Patrick Pinder. Pinder says county officials spent much of the week monitoring storms moving through Central Texas, thankful that the heaviest rainfall stayed north and west of the county.
“These last few days, we were monitoring the weather conditions north of us. Here in Guadalupe County, we were able to kind of skirt the outsides of the heavy impacted rains like you seen in Uvalde and Kerrville the last couple days. We kind of were on the outskirts of that storm. So we were fortunate enough not to get the heavy rainfalls that they got. However, we did see a significant amount of rain in the county. I think some people are reporting five, six, seven inches of rain depending on where you’re at in the county,” said Pinder.
Despite that, he says emergency crews remained busy. Pinder says Wednesday’s heavy downpour in the Cibolo area triggered numerous high-water emergencies.
“We did have several water rescues, folks driving around barricades, getting into the water. We did have to utilize boats. We used the boat team from Cibolo, McQueeney Volunteer Fire Department had a boat available, and we also were contacting Seguin just to make sure that we had enough resources available,” said Pinder.
While localized rainfall caused some issues, Pinder says officials became increasingly concerned as floodwaters from Kendall County traveled downstream along Cibolo Creek.
“When we saw that the gauge at I-35 was looking at 21 feet projected, that causes a lot of concern. Overnight, the water was hitting the frontage road bridge on I-35. That’s a lot of water coming down,” said Pinder.
He says the greatest concern came downstream near New Berlin, where Cibolo Creek eventually crested at 36 feet.
Communities including Schertz, Cibolo, Selma and areas near New Berlin closely monitored the rising creek. Pinder says local officials should be praised for notifying their residents living near the water.