“That’s nature for you, I guess,” he said.
He had only moved a few of his belongings - a futon, a 20-inch television, a DVD player and stereo - into the place he planned to call home in Oak Springs Estates at 505 Dimple in Killeen. Thursday afternoon, he returned to a friend’s house, where he was staying until he finished moving, to shower and change clothes.
On Saturday, he found out it was gone, swept downstream by rising floodwaters of Nolan Creek. Witnesses said the mobile home hit the Dimple Street bridge, caught fire and washed four blocks downstream.
“We had talked about it after seeing it on the news,” Smith said. “I didn’t know it was mine.”
Mickey Stallworth, who worked to clean up debris at Oak Springs, said the mobile home at the bridge caused waters to back up even higher behind it before it was swept downstream. Those higher waters, he said, caused additional damage at the estates. Many of the mobile homes close to the creek bore duct-taped red notices warning “This building is unsafe and its use or occupancy is prohibited.”
Stallworth, who lives near the estates, said he and his family temporarily evacuated their house Thursday evening due to rising waters. Then as the rain fell Friday evening and into Saturday morning, they watched and waited.
“We kind of stayed up all last night worrying about it,” he said. “When the rain stopped we relaxed a little.”
Saturday provided a day for crews to work on cleaning damaged sites or for homeowners to check on their belongings along Nolan Creek, which continued to flow swiftly between its banks under raggedy patches of blue sky. That could change late Saturday night or Sunday.
“We have a break until tomorrow,” County Emergency Management Coordinator Dennis Baker said Saturday morning. “We could receive two inches of rain. Two inches over an 18-hour time period should be OK.”
The rain that fell late Friday night didn’t cause additional problems in the Killeen area, but did cause roads to be closed on the eastern side of Bell County in Troy and Temple areas. It also resulted in one high water rescue, according to Baker.
Since the rain fell so late many people weren’t out driving.
“I think people also are taking heed to the catchphrase “turn around, don’t drown,” he said.
Floodwaters claimed the lives of five people in Bell and Coryell Counties, and possibly a sixth, Thursday evening. Even as rain fell and workers tried to clean up from the flooding Friday, a tornado briefly touched down and caused damage to apartments, businesses and homes.
Baker, along with liaisons from the Governor’s Emergency Management office and from FEMA in Denton, spent the afternoon investigating the damage from the tornado and the flooding. The tornado caused minor damage to 96 single-family homes with missing shingles and broken windows, which would be covered by homeowners’ insurance policies, Baker said. Six businesses suffered damage, with five sustaining major damages that would take at least 30 days to repair. Seventeen apartment buildings also had damage - 13 with minor and four with major.
By late Saturday afternoon, Baker said they had found 40 homes along Nolan Creek that had been damaged by the flood.
Thus far, Baker said they had not developed a dollar amount for the damages.
Mary Bowers and others who live at Brookfield Mobile Home Park on 10th Street took time Saturday to look at Nolan Creek safely flowing within its banks and the devastation it caused when it surged into their housing area Thursday night. Chunks of asphalt lay on top of a knocked down hurricane fence. Willow trees, laced with trash in their highest branches, bent toward the eastward flow of the water.
Ms. Bowers said she plans to leave.
“I have some boxes,” she said. She plans to live in a house her boss agreed to rent to her. “God is good, but it had to take a flood and me about to get washed out.”
A neighbor knocked on her door at about 7 p.m. and told her she needed to get out.
“I was scared,” she said. “I hadn’t seen nothing like that but on TV.”
Carla McDaniel, who also lives in the park, said she came out of her house to find the water steadily rising.
“I turned around and saw the Dumpster float away,” she said. “I said ‘oh, we’ve got a problem’.”
Her car had a flat tire and she had planned to change it after the rain stopped.
“The water was rising up to my knees as I was changing the tire,” she said.
Minnie Darnell described everything in her trailer as ruined, which is about 15 feet above Nolan Creek, from the floodwaters. Friday night, even as the waters rose again and crept toward her house, she stayed.
“I don’t got nowhere else to go,” she said.
jsicking@temple-telegram.com
