‘It’s overwhelming’: Flooding in Valley’s rural communities left residents in despair

6 days ago 62

SAN BENITO — Rafael Villa dried himself off with a towel before changing into his work clothes from the back of his car last Thursday morning.

Since the torrential rain of March 27, his home and those of many who reside at the Green Valley Farms subdivision remained under several feet of murky, dark brown water.

His house is located on Cactus Lane, where he lives with his wife and his three children. With his entire neighborhood flooded, Villa has had to wade through the standing water for nearly 2 miles to get to his car parked where the water begins to subside on Green Valley Farms Street.

There in the back of his car, he keeps his dry work clothes which he changes into on the street before work.

“Our cars have been getting stolen,” Villa said. “People have been getting things stolen from their homes. The cars have been getting robbed. We’ve got infections — well, I have an infection on one of my legs.”

Villa rolled up his jeans to reveal a large, pink blemish on his calf. He said that it started as a cut, but has gotten worse as he’s had to walk through the standing water.

When asked if he’d had a doctor take a look at his leg, he said no.

“No time and money,” he said.

As he continued getting ready for work, a gray-colored Jeep Wrangler Sahara drove up and parked a few feet away. Pastor Victor Trejo of Los Fresnos Church of Christ and his wife, Selena Trejo, exited the vehicle and surveyed the area.

The pastor said that the couple had heard about the ongoing situation a few days prior.

“As soon as we heard about it, we just took it as, you know, we have to come out here and help people out,” Victor said. “When they’re going through life trauma like this, life tragedy, it takes a big toll on somebody. I think sometimes we see it so much in the news, and we see it so much in social media. Everybody’s going through stuff. We forget how it affects every individual separately. It affects every community separately and differently.”

He said that he planned to work with some other local church leaders to get supplies to residents who were stuck in their homes.

Selena had already visited the area the day before with her friend, Nataly Ramos. Together, the two women went house to house checking on the people inside and delivering food until their ATV stalled and they were forced to walk the rest of the way.

“It was sad, honestly,” Selena said. “They don’t really have a lot of help except for another church that’s been here. I feel like a lot of people didn’t even know and that’s a big problem.”

The pastor and his wife got back into their Jeep and slowly drove down Green Valley Farms Street, with the road disappearing under the dark water. As they carefully drove down the road, they observed entire neighborhoods completely underwater with street signs sprouting out.

“Reacting to life is what we do a lot, because we’re emotional human beings,” Victor said. “Learning to respond to life, this is where we can help each other. When we respond, we experience emotion, and then we recover. When we’re able to respond to life, I think that’s when we can all come together and realize there is need. We do need to have empathy for people. Just because we’re OK doesn’t mean other people are OK.

“There’s a saying, I have it in my notes because I’ve used it in one of my sermons, ‘Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you respond to it.’”

The couple were soon met by Ramos, a chief warrant officer with the U.S. Army Reserves who had just gotten off of work. She was still wearing her fatigues when she arrived and was waiting for her husband to bring her a change of clothes.

She had heard about the flooding from a friend of hers who lives in the area. She said that she had been coming to the subdivision everyday since Monday, going house to house with a clipboard to take note of what each household needed.

“I was not expecting this,” she said. “When I came out here and I saw how bad it was, that’s when I started focusing on here. I started asking for donations online.”

Just before 12 p.m., a Red Cross food truck arrived and began handing out plates of food.

MERCEDES

The National Weather Service Brownsville/Rio Grande Valley reported between 16 and 20-plus inches of rain fell in a span of 24 hours in the Valley, with areas in La Feria and Harlingen to Rio Hondo receiving the highest numbers.

The Mid-Valley has historically struggled with flooding due in large part to its location in an area that plateaus, causing water from other higher sitting locations to accumulate.

It’s a problem that Hidalgo County has worked to address with the 2018 Drainage Bond Program, which was approved by voters in November 2018.

Since then, the county has constructed a number of retention ponds in flood-prone areas to alleviate the accumulated water.

Just over a week after the flooding, the retention pond between the Chapa and Las Brisas subdivisions was dry.

“Back in 2018 these two subdivisions had water inside the homes of almost 3 to 4 feet, not on the street, inside the homes,” said Pepe Cabeza de Vaca, assistant chief of staff for Hidalgo County Commissioner Precinct 1 David Fuentes. “When water goes inside, then we have a problem because people start losing their belongings and their stuff.”

He said that while the streets did flood on March 27, the retention pond prevented the water from entering the nearby homes.

“When it floods, streets are supposed to carry the water to the drain, right? So we checked with the people, and there was no water inside their homes, compared to 2018 that they had about 3 to 4 feet of water inside their homes,” Cabeza de Vaca said. “So that means that this thing worked. It did the job”

A few miles southeast is the Kika De La Garza subdivision located off of Mile 2 East near Expressway 83. Trash bins placed at the end of Ash Avenue were overflowing with garbage. A rancid smell carried down the neighborhood where members of the Hidalgo County Office of Emergency Management and FEMA visited with residents and documented the damage.

Richard Zavala said that he has lived in the neighborhood for 27 years, and he has never experienced flooding like what he saw on March 27 before.

“It had never gone into our home,” he said. “No matter how high it got, it would never go into our home. But now this time was the first that it actually went into our houses.”

He said that he had to throw out some beds and refrigerators among other things. Trees and stop signs were marked with orange spray paint displaying how high the water rose in the area.

“My son went to the middle of the street, and (the water) was like halfway,” he said, holding his hands to his waist to demonstrate how high the water was. “The water had already gone down to that spot when they marked it. So it was about that much more, but when they came around again to mark it, it was like that.”

PHARR

The front lawn of Jose Plascencia Curiel’s home on Habitat Circle East was littered with household items that were ruined by last month’s flooding.

Clothes, furniture, and kitchen items covered most of his yard, including a large sofa that had to be sawed into three parts in order for him to get it out of his home.

More items were collected in the car port. Among those items were a few photo albums with photos going decades back. He became emotional as he looked through the warped photos — turning pages to find some pages discolored and filled with dry grass.

Inside his home, a brown stain covered the white walls along the floor, a telltale sign showing where the nearly 2-feet of water reached. The smell of mildew lingered throughout as Curiel continued working to clean his home nearly two weeks after the flooding. He estimated the total amount of damage to be around $5,000.

He was visited by Ramona Casas and Andrea Landeros from ARISE Adelante, a nonprofit immigrant rights advocacy group, who has worked to inform those affected by the flooding about the available resources and information about the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

His daughter, Belem, fought tears as she recalled the water flowing into the home just over an hour after it began raining.

“I was cold, it was scary,” she recalled. “It was sad because my parents worked for everything they have, and me too. It’s like we lost pretty much everything except for clothing that was hanging on the closet.”

She said that her family tried to salvage what they could, placing items on the kitchen table. As the water level rose, she said that she began to pray.

The women handed out fliers to some neighbors in the area before going to the San Felipe subdivision off of Dicker Road.

They stopped at a home on Rusty Drive where Aurelio Reyna lives with his wife, Margarita Vega. Like the other homes in the area, damaged furniture, clothes and food piled near the street.

The inside of the home was fairly clean thanks to members of their church who volunteered to help the elderly couple. The interior gray walls had a white chemically based paint near the floor to get rid of bacteria.

The couple had to be rescued by boat during the flooding. While their home was mostly salvaged, Vega was now bedridden — experiencing fits of vomiting which she attributes to the standing water in her home.

Casas, a coordinator with ARISE Adelante, said that she worries about how those affected by the flooding will recover. She recalled other such instances when residents in colonias have been hesitant to document and report the damage to their homes.

“So this time, we said that we need to work better to help the community to do the reports, but the community doesn’t believe in that,” Casas said. “We need to educate and inform more of the community about the importance of documentations.”

She said that many families are either scared to share their information, or they no longer trust that they will receive help once they apply.

“We have seen other emergencies like this, but not too heavy like this time,” she said. “But they were not receiving support at all. That’s why they don’t believe it.”

Jaime Longoria, executive director for the Hidalgo County Community Service Agency, described the situation as one of the most destructive in his 10 years working for the county.

He recalled at least one story of a father who placed his two young children on some furniture to avoid the flood water, but the furniture began to get carried away with his children.

“It’s overwhelming, because the resources that we offer seem so meager in some ways, but the people are so grateful,” he said. “They’re grateful that the county, and in particular, the Community Service Agency, is out there providing assistance.”

Longoria referenced the Texas Department of Emergency Management which reported at least 3,673 homes affected by the flooding in Hidalgo County alone.

He urged homeowners to be aware of mold in homes which could cause illness as a result of the water. He also encouraged residents to document everything with pictures.

“There’s a lot of organizations that want to help, but it takes us a little while to mobilize resources and to evaluate each situation,” Longoria said. “I know it’s hard to stay patient when it’s your home and it’s your vehicle not working and you’ve got to get to work. We hear them all around the county.”

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