An Ingram councilman with stage 4 cancer is using ever moment he has left to get a siren warning system built
INGRAM, Texas — The things Ingram City Councilman Raymond Howard saw in the early morning hours of the July 4th flooding will haunt him the rest of his life.
From the door of his home near the Guadalupe river, he could see a camper trailer floating down the river with people inside.
“I could hear them screaming. It was a scream I’ll never forget,” Howard said. “I heard it crunch up against the bridge.”
Howard also saw a young child in the river that morning. When the councilman was younger, he had actually trained for swift water rescues. Now he’s battling stage 4 cancer and is frequently in the hospital. On July 4th, all he could do was watch.
“We made eye contact. I was trying to tell them to grab something to float. Grab a tree! Grab anything!” Howard said. “I felt absolutely useless. I couldn’t do anything.”
Still, Raymond Howard is a city councilman in Ingram. That morning, Howard decided his city would build a siren flood warning system even if that’s the last thing he did in his life. Over the next month, Howard worked from either his home or hospital bed to research siren systems, contact engineering companies, and set up a special council meeting to consider building a siren system.
On Monday, August 11, the Ingram City Council held that special meeting and heard a presentation from Chris Gordon with Whelan Engineering on a possible three-siren system. Howard joined by zoom from his hospital bed.
Less than an hour later the council voted to move forward with building the system and start looking for ways to fund it.
“It’s going to be loud enough that the entire town of Ingram is going to hear three sirens going off,” Howard said.
On Tuesday, KENS 5 spoke to both Ingram Mayor Claud Jordan and Code Enforcement Officer Stuart Gross who often serves as a city spokesperson. Both were fully in favor of building the system as soon as possible.
Gross said, at this point, the city was no longer going to wait on state grants or additional studies to get the project done. He said they’ve seen too much death already.
“There’s a lot of people who died down here. To see our fire house used as a makeshift mortuary was just terrible. Just gut-wrenching. If you were here that morning, and you lived on the river, you would know why we want to do it now,” Gross said.
State lawmakers are passing legislation that would create a fund for flood warning systems but the bill still needs to brought up in the Texas House of Representatives at this time. Even if that funding source was only a few months away, Gross said the city wants to start construction sooner.
“Let me give you an analogy,” Gross said. “Your wife and kids drive a minivan and the brakes are bad. Somebody says just keep using it, but lightly. I promise we are going to pay for it. Are you going to allow that? No. You are going to do what you need to do right now. Unless you are a psychic, you don’t know when the next flood is coming.”
Currently the system would cost around $167,000, plus several thousand dollars more for river gauge sensors. The siren system could be triggered by one of several National Weather Service warnings in addition to the sensors.
Howard told KENS 5 he is working with State Senator Pete Flores to look for local entrepreneurs that could help them raise the money.
Despite the cost, Howard has another incentive for getting the project done quickly. With stage 4 cancer, Howard doesn’t know how long he has left to live. The councilman hopes to see the sirens installed by the end of October and said he will work every day to make that happen.
“I want to see this said and done and operating. Knowing that when I leave this earth and God takes me home I’ve done my part in trying to save people down the line,” said Howard. “Because it will happen again.”