'Clogged drainage' may be responsible for structural damage at North Austin Business Center

The severe weather that moved through the Austin area Wednesday morning did some damage.

The Thrall Police Department tells FOX 7 lightning caused a house fire.

When first responders arrived the family told them all people made it out safely.  But the family dog might not have. Thrall Police Chief Whitney Whitworth says when he got closer to the house he found the dog safe and sound outside.

Also Wednesday morning wind damage in Caldwell County.  

Officials are working to confirm whether a tornado came through.

Always a concern in a flash flooding event -- Onion Creek. Matt Porcher with Austin's Watershed Protection Department says the National Weather Service issued a flood warning for the creek.

"They forecasted a height was about 17 feet and that's well below the threshold where it would affect houses so we kept an eye on Onion Creek, we had crews driving around there and we also kept an eye on the gauges," Porcher said.  

Porcher says the water level would have to be much higher for homes to be affected -- the Halloween 2013 record crest was more than 40 feet.

Porcher says Watershed Protection has been stationed at the Emergency Operations Center along with Homeland Security and Emergency Management keeping an eye on the storms.

"Just some low water crossing closures so you can check atxfloods.com to find out where those are and we also highly recommend that people visit warncentraltexas.org and register their cell phones to get emergency notifications in our area," Porcher said.

One of the buildings at the North Austin Business Center on Burnet was taped off and closed Wednesday.  Austin Code Enforcement thinks clogged drainage is responsible for nearly bringing the building in on itself. "There's a swimming pool on top of this roof," said Bonifacio Alba with "Water Damage and Restoration of Austin."

Alba says it's their third flood clean-up of the day.

"Woke up early.  Got phone calls back to back," he said.

They've got their work cut out for them here. "There was puddles of water everywhere, I mean at least half an inch of water on the floors.  It was pretty bad," Alba said.  

Alba says they'll be going from business to business in the complex cleaning up.

"We're scraping glue-down carpet floors and then on this next building they have wood floors so we're going to remove those also," Alba said.  "We use de-humidifers and air blowers and we remove the flooring and just let it dry out for the next 3 days, 4 days."