“The rains will come again,” said Sylvia Halbardier.
SAN ANTONIO — When friends of flood victim Christine Gonzalez came to visit her modest memorial on Beitel Creek Friday morning, neighborhood resident Sylvia Halbardier approached them with caution.
Halbardier said in the 44 days since June 12, the stream of visitors has been steady, as family members and friends continue to pay their respects to those lost when a sudden downburst tossed cars in raging water and killed 11 people.
Fighting back tears, when talking about the desperate effort to save lives in the early morning darkness, Halbardier said “It is frustrating because I don’t want to wake up another Thursday morning and hear helicopters. I don’t want to do that again!”
The long-time resident, whose own home took on water in the record flood of October 1998 said “And meeting these people who lost their loved ones. I don’t want to do it again. They just need to tell us what’s happening.”
Halbardier said “Our representatives haven’t reached out, I mean, there’s been nothing, nothing has happened.”
Until workers started installing construction barriers this week, she said she was shocked that neighbors who have been living in fear weren’t seeing any action to address what they perceive as continuing danger from a drainage channel that was badly damaged more than one month ago.
“If there’s significant rain, we’re calling each other and talking about where it’s pooling up because at the intersection at Briarglen and Windover, it gets underwater pretty quickly,” Halbardier said, adding “Is it over the curb, we ask, you know, we call each other.”
Halbardier said with current technology, relying on a telephone tree of phone calls or neighbors knocking on each other’s doors is simply not good enough.
“We know there’s technology out there that can do this we just need to know what it’s going to take to get it in place and installed for us,” Halbardier said.
Halbardier, whose home is just 500 feet or so from the creek where the dead were recovered, said the people who died in the area didn’t live nearby, so the free flow of information in the community is important to everyone.
“The rains will come again. The rains will come again,” Halbardier said sadly.
City officials have said the preliminary price tag for damage, city wide, is $21 million dollars.
They said as repairs continue, street closures can be tracked online.
A written statement from Public Works reads: “Cleanup is a collaborative effort between City staff and a contractor currently under contract. Repair work will similarly be a combination of City staff and a contractor. Contractors that will be performing repair work will likely have to be solicited.”
They did not provide a timeline for the repairs.
Halbardier, who has vivid memories of flood water overtaking her home in 1998, said of the previous effort to recover “I remember being informed of what was happening, what to expect, when crews would be here and I haven’t heard anything like that,” Halbardier said, adding “There are phones that you can send out texts or something, anything, really, anything.”
And beyond receiving information, Halbardier said many people in the area should be consulted because they have lived experience with flooding.
“Somebody in the neighborhood can tell them ‘Well that won’t work because of this, you know, this issue or that issue.'” Halbardier said, adding “They need input from us.”