WIMBERLEY, Texas — On a hot and humid mid-July afternoon, cars rumble down the streets of downtown Wimberley. Visitors browse Western-themed shops boasting vintage cowboy boots, cacti and local wine. Fourth of July banners blow in the wind, lining a bridge spanning a small creek that trickles through town. People float on inner tubes in the nearby Blanco River, sipping beers and splashing in the water.
Ten years ago, this area was practically unrecognizable. On Memorial Day weekend in 2015, the Blanco River suddenly rose more than 40 feet in the middle of the night, swelling to about a quarter of a mile wide in some places and carrying away nearly everything in its path. At least 12 people were killed, including several children, and hundreds of structures were damaged or destroyed, according to local authorities.
Since then, the small town of roughly 3,000 has focused on rebuilding itself with a potential flood like that in mind, installing new safety measures and alert systems with financial help from the state. But residents and government officials say that the recent deadly, destructive flooding in nearby Kerr County earlier this month has reinforced the need for more preparedness in flood-prone areas like Wimberley. It's also reopened old emotional wounds that still hadn't fully healed.
"It's really hard for us to watch the news right now, because it's just so eerily similar to what we went through that night 10 years ago," says resident and business owner Natalie Meeks.
She and her husband run a vacation resort along the Blanco River, which has been in his family for nearly a hundred years. Today, the river is calm, down a bank and a few hundred feet away from the nearest cabins. But during the flood, Meeks says those cabins ended up 20 feet under water.
She and her husband woke up in the middle of the night to phone calls and alerts from people upriver, and rushed to the cabins to pull guests out — in some cases, physically carrying them — trying to find higher ground as the property was swallowed by the river.
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"The only light source we had was lightning and transformers blowing," Meeks remembers. "All you could hear was the ancient cypress trees just snapping, and the river just wasn't stopping."
She says they could hear houses being carried down the river, the people inside screaming for help. There was nothing they could do.
All 100 guests and Meeks' family survived that night, but the water washed two of the cabins away. The rest of the structures were severely damaged.
Rebuilding continues even a decade later
Meeks says it took nearly a year just to clear debris after the flood. Since then, it's been one project after another. On the far end of the Meeks' vacation resort, a cabin built on stilts engineered to withstand the rush of future flood waters is in the middle of construction.
"Even after seeing the aftermath of the flood, I didn't comprehend how much time and money it would take to rebuild. It's overwhelming," Meeks says, noting that it's not just about the physical rebuilding. "It's emotional for a long time. It's just a long, long process."
This area in central Texas has long been known as Flash Flood Alley. Droughts cause rivers to run nearly dry for months, sometimes years at a time; heavy rains then make them suddenly overflow. Locals know that floods are part of life; often, they welcome the rain to replenish the water in swimming areas popular with tourists. But so-called 100-year-floods have been happening more frequently, as climate change is driving more intense rain storms across much of the U.S., dropping more water in shorter periods of time.
This month's disaster in Kerr County has some of Wimberley's residents thinking about the possibility of another flood in their area, says Mayor Jim Chiles, who was not mayor at the time of the 2015 flood but has been since May 2024.
Mayor Chiles says he has already had talks with city leaders about putting flooding infrastructure and safety front and center, specifically looking into an audible, citywide alert system like sirens, something many communities in the area are talking about as the death toll from Kerr County's floods has hit at least 130. Many think that might have helped save lives, especially when flooding happens in the middle of the night.
"It's all very premature, but we had an agenda setting meeting," he says. "We put something on there to talk about sirens. Sirens are very expensive, and we gotta figure out how to do that."
He says he's hopeful the state will step in to help with it.
Wimberley put in new safety measures after the floods
After Wimberley's flood in 2015, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott transferred $6.8 million from a state disaster contingency fund for statewide floodplain management, as well as more river gauges, which monitor the level of the water and send real-time information to weather alert systems.
Wimberley's then-mayor Steve Thurber secured several new gauges for the town, which only had one before the flood and was swept away during the storm. Since then, three have been installed upriver, allowing for much more accurate monitoring.
But securing more funding will likely be difficult. Kerr County tried for years — and ultimately failed — to find a way to pay for a new alert system, including sirens. And now, prospects are even more limited, as the Trump administration has frozen or canceled billions of dollars dedicated to help rural communities prepare for disasters.
Seventy-seven year-old Jim Venable has lived in Wimberley for most of his life, and while he hopes more infrastructure for flooding and alerts will be put in, he's not optimistic.
"Well, it's always about the dollars, right? You know, how much are the people worth?," he says.
Venable was a construction contractor nearby in Austin before the flooding. But afterward, he quit that job to focus on rebuilding Wimberley.
"I think there's still a lot of PTSD after the fact," he says, adding that over the Fourth of July weekend, as Kerr County flooded, residents in Wimberley were on edge. "We're just looking at the rain, and we're just going, well, is that going to hit here or what's going to happen?"
A popular vacation destination
Wimberley sits in Hays County, one of the fastest-growing counties in both Texas and the U.S, according to recent census data. In the summer, the population booms as it welcomes tourists and seasonal summer residents alike, according to town officials. The town is just 40 miles from Austin, making it a popular vacation spot for city dwellers.
Venable says he welcomes the extra people coming to enjoy the town, but their presence highlights an even greater need for flood protections.
"We keep inviting people to come in, but we've got to protect them and take care of them, because we're apt to get these storms anytime," he says.
Gabrielle Snyder works as a visitor services coordinator for Wimberley's tourism department. She says since the flooding in Kerr County, she's had tourists call, concerned about upcoming trips to Wimberley.
"You want to be sympathetic and supportive, but we weren't affected by these latest floods," she says.
She says part of her job is telling visitors about the need to sign up for flood alert systems and participate in emergency preparedness. But she has to walk a fine line, because the town wants — and needs — people to come.
"Obviously, Wimberley knows better than a lot of communities how devastating this situation is, but at the same time, you know, Wimberley is open," Snyder says.
Her house flooded back in 2015, forcing her, her husband and her daughter, who was 9 years old at the time, to quickly grab what they could and evacuate. It was a rental property, and the damage was so severe that it was eventually torn down.
For a time, they lived in an RV borrowed from a friend, until they bought a home in a different part of Wimberley — with one major requirement. "Never again will we live on the river," Snyder says.
After witnessing what a powerful flood can do, she says she's fine with appreciating the river from a distance.
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