Its being called one of the deadliest U.S. floods in decades.
Devastation in central Texas over the holiday weekend as heavy rain and flooding on the Guadalupe River created a 26 to 30 foot wall of water.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller says while the priority in Texas is on search and rescue for the over 40 people still missing, flash flooding hit 21 counties, accounting for about 10% of the state.
He says they won’t have an accurate damage total for at least a month, but the loss to agriculture will be significant.
“If you can picture this in your mind, in less than 24 hours there was the same amount of water that goes through Niagara Falls in a month and a half. Now that’s that’s a lot of water by anybody’s standard. It came early in the morning, 3 a .m. pretty much unannounced,” he describes.
Miller says they haven’t assessed the agricultural damage yet but this is a large production area for cattle, sheep, goats and hay, but also vineyards and wineries.
“But I can tell you firsthand that we have over hundreds and hundreds of miles of fencing destroyed, barns, structures wiped out, homes wiped out, farm equipment, tractors underwater, implements washed down the river, crops underwater, crops washed out. We’re finding dead livestock, cows, and top of trees in the river bottom. So it’s the impact on agriculture is going to be pretty large,” he says.
Miller says they’re helping farmers and ranchers with supplies and opening up the STAR or State of Texas Agriculture Relief fund, plus the agriculture mental health hotline to all Texans.
He says, “I have opened up our hay and feed hotline. If anybody needs feed or hay, call that. You can find it on our website TexasAgriculture .gov. Also, if you want to donate or even donate transportation, we could use that. Number two is our emergency response hotline or agri -stress helpline. That’s probably the most important one.”
Texas AgriLife Extension, including Disaster Assessment and Recovery agents and County Extension Agents, also mobilized over the weekend to support Kerr County.
The devastation comes as Texas farmers and ranchers are still recovering from one of the largest wildfires in U.S. history just a little more than a year ago.
