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Flooding Along Loop 12 Snarls Dallas Traffic For Hours

Bill Zeeble
/
KERA News
Abandoned van in the lake that used to be the Loop-12 service road, looking north. Snarled traffic in back is southbound Loop-12.

One of the worst traffic snarls stopped vehicles at a flooded section of Loop 12 under Interstate 30 in West Dallas.

A patient driver couldn’t get to work because the road was under water.

With a TV chopper overhead, diesel mechanic Elmer McGuire surveyed his travel options. Parked here with his truck three-and-a-half hours, he was stopped at the flooded Loop 12 service road at Bernal.

“Well, it’s payday and I really need to get my check but I mean, as you see, I can’t get over to my job,” McGuire explained. “So it’s like I’m stuck. I’m just here passing time, now, really, looking at the traffic, seeing how they’re going to let these other people on the highway get by.”

Under I-30 is the small lake that stopped Loop 12 traffic cold. Looking north, McGuire sees water and an endless parking lot of cars. 

Credit Bill Zeeble / KERA News
/
KERA News
At this point, mechanic Elmer McGuire's been here 3.5 hours trying to get to work. Flooded roads, including Loop-12 and the Loop-12 service road, were closed by police.

"I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” McGuire exclaims. “I didn’t. I mean, wow, I’ve not seen anything like this since Hurricane Katrina, when, and I was watching it on TV, so I mean it’s weird. I’ve been here all my life.  I’m 50 years old. ... Wow.”

A chip shot away from where McGuire stands sits a partially submerged van abandoned in the flooded service road.

By noon, a crane had moved a section of concrete wall letting backed up cars on southbound Loop 12 U-turn north away from the flood. 

Credit Bill Zeeble / KERA News
/
KERA News
Police eventually - temporarily - let big trucks drive south through the flooded section of Loop-12. The crane in the photo moved the concrete wall to let cars and, here, the orange cab 18-wheeler, U-turn north away from the flood under the I-30 overpass.

Bill Zeeble has been a full-time reporter at KERA since 1992, covering everything from medicine to the Mavericks and education to environmental issues.