Levi Gutierrez stood in the parking lot of The Light of The World church in Uvalde Saturday, handing out free clothes to people displaced by the record-breaking floodwaters that inundated the town.
As the water recedes, Gutierrez said many in the community of around 15,000 are now looking for help.
“We have a lot coming, and usually it's with children and with babies,” said Gutierrez.
A little girl wandered behind him, picking out clothes from a rack. Volunteers were also distributing other essentials to residents, like cups, pots and pans.
Gutierrez said his own home on the west side of the city was flooded. He was forced to evacuate with his grandmother, who uses a wheelchair.
Gutierrez said there’s been flooding in the past, but nothing like this.
“The scope of the communities that were affected, and how bad they were affected — yeah, this is very unique,” he said.
As of 4:30 p.m. Saturday, the Texas Department of Transportation reported multiple roadways across the region were closed due to damage and flooding.
The Uvalde Police Department is asking residents to "please drive with caution and respect all barricades you encounter."
"They are in place for your protection, and going around them puts you and others at risk," wrote the department in a Saturday social media post.
The historic storm wreaked havoc across the Hill Country and South Central Texas last week, killing two people, displacing countless others and destroying property across a huge swath of the state. Some of the worst-hit areas include Uvalde and Zavala counties, where more than 125 people were displaced as of Friday afternoon, according to Gov. Greg. Abbott.
While the storm has passed and rain isn’t in the forecast for the area, officials say rivers around Uvalde remain a threat.
“The Nueces River and the Frio River are still up,” said Bob Fogarty, a Texas-based meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “So people along the river, really close to the rivers right now, are really the places that we're concerned about for the next few days.”
The Nueces River in Uvalde County crested at 28.01 feet on Thursday, breaking the previous record of 24.88 feet set in 1996.
“The rivers here in this part of Texas, they tend to be low because we don't get a lot of rain, and we don't have a lot of river flow normally,” Fogarty said. “But right now, because of all the rain, the rivers went really high, really fast.”
He said more than 20 inches of rain fell over the area last week after heavy moisture in the atmosphere led to a rare wet storm in a typically dry month in Texas.
“Every now and then, like we've now seen a couple years in a row where we were able to get the thunderstorms to develop and when you do at this time of year, it can be really bad,” said Fogarty.
Hill Country residents are still recovering from a record-breaking flood that struck there last July, killing more than 130 people.
Still, Fogarty called the back-to-back storms an anomaly.
“I wouldn’t say [this is the new normal],” he said. “Not only was it unusual last year, it was unusual this year, and I would not expect it to be something we see more often.”
Flooding along the Nueces River destroyed part of the FM 481 bridge southwest of Uvalde, cutting off a key connection between Uvalde and Eagle Pass.
Images released by the Texas Department of Public Safety show a large portion of the crossing missing.
Known locally as Old Eagle Pass Road, FM 481 is an important rural route linking U.S. 90 in Uvalde with U.S. 57 toward Eagle Pass. Its closure is expected to create lengthy detours for residents, ranchers, agricultural workers and commercial traffic.
While U.S. 90 through Uvalde has reopened after earlier flooding that nearly cut off the city, officials warn that many roads across the region remain closed, damaged or are awaiting inspection.
Abbott signed a major-disaster declaration to provide federal relief to the 28 counties impacted by the flood. The declaration was approved by President Donald Trump on Saturday.
Blaise Gainey and Dan Katz contributed to this story.
