Small community near Elroy suffers severe damage after historic rainfall

TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas— A small community near Elroy was basically underwater after Friday’s historic rainfall. Trucks were overturned, debris was everywhere, you could literally see through one home that was just wiped out by the powerful water.

Most of the homes suffered severe damage and many residents lost everything, but some said they are lucky to even be alive.

Tina Aleman has lived in the small town for more than 40 years and she said she’s never seen anything like this before.

“I think it started raining at, like, 9:30, and then it started raining hard, and then by 10:30 it was already coming down and I went to the bedroom and I could see the water coming to my knee,” Aleman said. “It came so fast, by the time we looked outside the street was already flooded.”

Her home— like many others— was underwater after floodwaters engulfed the community. “I told my son, ‘call 911,’ and they told us we had to wait, ‘you have to wait. You've got 100 people in front you all.’ It was kind of scary, because, you know, when you're in trouble and they tell you to wait, what are you supposed to do?”

Aleman said she was up to her neck in water and was fearful of being swept away.

“At one time I said well, you know, I'm not going to make it, I just stood there for about three or four hours, I couldn't move anyway,” she said.

All she could do is wait. “The only think I could think was, ‘I should've left early,’ but it happened so fast, it just happened real quick,” she said.

Fortunately for her, Mother Nature finally gave in.

“I got a wood floor, and it was splitting, you know. The floor was giving way, and then the water was going down, and I could feel it cause it was going down. I said thank god,” Aleman said. But the damage had already been done. “My house is damaged completely, I mean we got all my furniture out. My furniture is damaged.”

Aleman found her neighbors truck from down the road, upside down, in her driveway.

“You could see the truck coming, it flipped over,” she said, adding although she may have lost everything, she's walking away with the most important thing, her life. “We have to start from the bottom, and you know it's going to take a little while, but we survived, that's amazing.”