San Antonio released 911 calls from the deadly June 12 flooding, revealing the chaos as residents struggled to escape rising waters and inadequate protection.
SAN ANTONIO — They are recordings that are hard to listen to, recounting how drivers and witnesses struggled to escape when they were being swept away by floodwaters here in San Antonio.
More than one month after the fatal flood on June 12, in which at least 13 people died, the City of San Antonio has released some of the 911 calls made by people who survived after calling for help.
KENS 5 did not request any calls related to those who didn’t survive.
While a third-party consultant is continuing an independent review of the event, a city spokesman said damage assessment and cleanup is ongoing. So far, they say, the request submitted to the Texas Division of Emergency Management for disaster funding consideration is $21 million, which includes estimates by public works, fire, police and parks departments.
The panicked calls started flooding the city’s 911 call center just before 4 a.m., when multiple people drove into danger, many of them in places where drivers reported there were no barriers in place.
We have redacted the names and exact locations for the sake of privacy, but we are sharing things that were said to paint a more detailed picture of the challenges callers and call takers faced in the rush to save lives.
A man who said he was driving a pickup said he was OK, but he could see smaller vehicles being overwhelmed on FM 1976.
“You can’t even see the road. Right now I’m at the edge where I could go off and not even know what’s the side of the road right now on 1976,” the man said. “They really need to close this thing off because you can’t, it’s like a river here and you can’t tell what’s what.”
A man on Basse reported, “Somebody else is going to come through here and somebody’s going to drown,” adding the often-repeated advice: “Police need to get out here and block this intersection off on both sides. It is like when they say ‘turn around, don’t drown.’ This is serious right here!”
“There’s no barricades or anything and my truck is literally floating away right now,” another man said.
A man driving near the Interstate 35 ramp to I-37 reported drivers were trying to turn around on the freeway just before it was too late: “I just saw that it’s too deep. I know what it looks like during the daytime and now it’s about three feet deep.”
The man went on to say, “There’s an 18-wheeler that went through it. He’s up on top, stalled out and I’ve never seen it that deep, if I may just tell you that.” The call taker agreed, saying, “Oh yeah, it’s pretty bad out there right now.”
On Loop 1604 near Bulverde Road, one man said numerous vehicles were stalled out.
“There’s nobody here to warn anybody that this water is above the tire level of most vehicles.”
The caller went on to say they saw four or five vehicles stopped all over the road and “It’s going to get ugly here because the big trucks aren’t stopping and somebody’s gonna get killed if they don’t, you know, divert traffic off at Bulverde or something.”
‘The car is floating away’
Many times, callers had trouble describing their exact locations.
When told his phone was locating him on I-37, one man replied, “I guess like 10, I don’t even know what exit this is. I think it’s 41.”
A woman who had trouble providing the name of the street where she was stuck told the call taker, “I see down the street there’s a Burger King and it looks like there’s a gas station but I’m not sure if it’s a Valero.”
There were varying degrees of panic, rising with the water.
One woman in the Walzem Road area exclaimed, “I’m stuck in the water trying to get home,” followed shortly by: “Oh my God I’m scared!”
A woman who heard from her stranded spouse said, “My husband just called me, and the car is floating away like in the water and he’s freaking out.”
When advised that the man had made it out of his overwhelmed vehicle, the call taker said he would just have to wait for the water to recede, to which the woman replied, “I don’t know because he’s not answering his phone anymore and he just texted me that another car is on top of ours.”
On Roosevelt on the south side, one man said, “Oh **it! I’m stranded and I’m floating in the water!” When asked if he was near the railroad track, he replied, “Oh my God what’s coming into my car? I think it’s already by my door.”
Meanwhile, another man told of making out of his pickup before adding that “I’m in waist-deep water.”
He went on to tell the call taker some drivers had resorted to traveling the wrong way on the main lanes of the highway: “A lot of these fools over here trying to go the wrong way, trying to get away from this flood on the freeway and I’m going to see that a lot of people are going to be in more wrecks.”
A man on Loop 410 was asked if his car was fully submerged yet.
His forlorn reply: “Almost.”
‘You’re cutting in and out’
While another man responded to a question about whether water was inside his vehicle by saying, “I hope not. I’m praying to God because it’s still raining.”
The man went on to say he couldn’t escape because other vehicles behind him had him blocked in.
Another man who was told to call back if conditions got worse said, “I’m praying that that’s not going to happen. I’m praying.”
In the Binz Engleman area, one woman tried to get help for people in trouble when she avoided getting stuck.
“There’s two vehicles floating,” she said. “I don’t know if they got out, but they were floating. The water was probably past the window.”
One woman on her way home from work in the Midcrown area told call takers her car stalled, and she had to run to a nearby apartment complex for shelter.
She said, “There’s just so much rain and there’s more cars down the road and I think they should close the road off!”
One man who avoided getting stuck told the call taker about another driver in trouble. When asked if the vehicle was fully submerged in the water, the man replied, “Yeah and the person is still in the car.”
We found some callers who had trouble getting through for help.
A man on Weidner was told by the call taker, “You’re cutting in and out, probably because of the weather.”
Meanwhile, numerous callers got a recording: “You have reached the fire and EMS departments. All our representatives are currently handling another emergency call.”
Other calls appeared to drop during the deluge.
One woman who called from the Loop 1604 and Judson Road area exclaimed, “I’ve called two times already.” The woman went on to say the water in her car was up to the dash of her car and creeping up the steering column.
And for some, there were language barriers. On Holbrook Road, several people at a Korean church had some trouble being understood until one caller said, “I will transfer the person the English is better.”
When the caller asked when help might arrive, the response was: “Unfortunately, I can’t give you an ETA. The city’s got 100 calls for the same thing all over the city.”
Another caller was told: “Right now we’re getting calls out for the high water… we’re trying to make sure our officers don’t get stuck as well but we are trying.”
Yet another was told, “You’re welcome to keep calling back checking on status, especially if things get worse, you need to call us back and let us know.”