VIDEOS/PHOTOS: The Austin Fire Department rescued multiple people from swift water due to the recent severe weather, and responded to over 700 storm-related calls. As the monster storm swept through Austin on Wednesday, it battered neighborhoods, like those along Shoal Creek.
Shoal Creek flooding
“Just crazy wind, sideways winds, scary wind,” said Laurie Painter, a Shoal Creek neighbor. “Lots of hail. Not really large hail, but maybe one-fourth to half an inch of hail.” It also brought lots of rain. “Looking out the window from 30 feet, it was opaque,” said Dianne Goss, another Shoal Creek resident. “You can usually see through the rain, but it was just a gray wall.”
Water rescue calls
Austin Fire says it got at least six water rescue calls. “Unfortunately, these types of rescues are something we do pretty regularly when we have flash flooding like this,” said Assistant Chief Thayer Smith. A call for two people swept away near Woodview Avenue and Burnet Road along Shoal Creek came into AFD around 7:30 pm Wednesday. They were able to save one person, but the other died.
“My understanding is that this was not a vehicle or something that was washed under the creek,” said Smith. “These were pedestrians that were somehow in the creek or near the creek.” Smith said his Austin fire team also assisted in a rescue near Interstate 35 and 183 where two people were swept into a drainage area. “Miraculously, survived going from one side of I-35 frontage road, all the way underneath the interstate in the drainage tunnel out the other side,” said Smith.
Storm-related calls
Dispatchers got about 700 calls in the 24 hours that followed the storm. 415 of them came in the first three hours, a drastic increase from the average 280 to 320 calls a day. Smith said he hadnโt seen this many calls during a thunderstorm since the 2015 Memorial Day Floods. “We were tremendously busy during the initial onset of the storm,” said Smith.
