WESLACO — Wednesday’s storm was nothing to laugh about but Raul Reyna met it with a smile.
He didn’t have a choice.
Reyna was standing in the middle of the intersection of Los Torritos Street and Illinois Avenue early Wednesday afternoon with his neighbors Thomas January and Isaac Torres.
The intersection started flooding when the storm rolled into Weslaco around 10 a.m. that morning. It dumped upwards of 4-and-a-half inches by the early afternoon.
The rain was still coming down, though a little lighter, and the water was still rising, lapping at the foundations of homes and around the wheelbases of cars pulled up off the road.
The men were up to their knees in the water, standing in rain coats and wielding rakes.
They had the rakes to pull debris out of drainage inlets. That was the best thing they could do — the only thing, really — to keep the water out of their living rooms.
They’d need a whole lot more than rakes to make any real progress.
Still, Reyna was cracking jokes, saying he and his neighbors ought to be getting a paycheck from the city before long for their volunteer labor.
Reyna and his neighbors have been through this sort of ordeal before. They’re used to it.
“You have to, man,” he chuckled. “You’ve got to stay positive.”
Beneath that nonchalant attitude and disaster-preparedness Reyna and the other men were frustrated. It’s not the first time the neighborhood by La Plazita Park has flooded and it’s not likely to be the last time.
Last time the water rose up above mailboxes; Wednesday’s flood wasn’t that bad, but the risk of property damage was still very real.
The main problem for those men in the intersections was motorists.
“These people with their big a– trucks pass by and go fast, and water goes into the houses and stuff,” January said.
When one of those trucks went by the water would just barely make it underneath the side door of January’s home. Someone who lives down the road tied a strand of caution tape around a stop sign and strung it across the street.
It seems like every time it floods the residents of Weslaco are on their own, January said.
“It hurts,” he said. “I mean, at least put up some barricades to stop these people driving. I mean, we understand you can’t stop the flooding.”
Stopping those drivers is often easier said than done, Weslaco Emergency Management Coordinator Antonio “Tony” Lopez said. He’s frustrated with them too.
“That’s one of the biggest challenges that PD has or us at emergency management within the city: to limit the movement of cars within these areas that are flooded,” he said. “And during these types of severe weather incidents barricades are put up, but it seems that people still do not abide by those laws. They go around a barricade and we still get reports from citizens of those people by padding a barricade and moving into flooded areas.”
There simply aren’t enough patrolmen to guard every entryway to a flooded neighborhood, Lopez said.
“So I agree with those citizens, the frustration, where people are still not abiding by that law,” he said.
The city relies on its citizens to keep off those roadways, and it relies on them to try to keep inlets clear of trash and plant debris, Lopez said. On other fronts, he says the city has made its own progress.
After flooding in 2015 and 2018 Lopez said the city went out for drainage project bonds. Those improvements are working, he said, even though it might not have looked that way at the corner of Los Torritos and Illinois on Wednesday.
Those streets, Lopez said, are designed to hold water so that it doesn’t go into people’s homes.
Wednesday’s floodwaters never stopped moving out of neighborhoods and there hadn’t been any reports of flooding inside homes as of about 2:30 p.m. that afternoon, Lopez said.
“We’re heading in the right direction, and that’s just the Valley as a whole,” he said. “You see every city has drainage projects going on, from the Upper Valley to the Lower Valley.”
Cold and wet and splashing around with their rakes, Reyna, Torres and January didn’t share that optimism Wednesday. They don’t live in a wealthy neighborhood and it’s been a hard year.
Reyna is on disability — he woke up from a months-long coma not long ago after surviving his kidneys shutting down and many visits to many hospitals.
“The hospitals love me,” he said, somehow still joking.
January is out of work too. A case of COVID-19 left him that way. He still has trouble breathing.
“We need a break,” he said.
View the full photo gallery below:
Photo Gallery: Another storm in RGV brings more flooding to struggling residents
