City to residents: Photograph flood damage

Area residents who suffered damage to property in this week’s flooding should photograph everything before making repairs, city officials said Wednesday.

They should also contact the Office of Emergency Management, which is gathering statistics to determine if the city qualifies for assistance from the state of Texas and the Federal Emergency Administration Agency, or FEMA, said Jeff Johnston, assistant city manager.

He estimated that 22 billions gallons of water were dumped on the city between midnight Saturday and 8 a.m. Sunday.

“That’s a massive amount of rain,” said Johnston, who is also the director of the Office of Emergency Management.

Individual insurance companies likely will require photographs of damage before making good on claims, he said.

For homeowners without insurance, he offered the following advice: “If residents don’t have insurance, they have to make sure they get a contract for a reputable contractor before they start doing any repair work on their homes. We just want residents to be careful and document what they are doing and keep receipts.”

Should FEMA aid become available, Johnston said residents must have receipts for all repairs as well as photographs taken before, during and after the repair work.

“All of that will be very important,” Johnston said.

On Wednesday, city crews were still mopping up, with pumps draining water from flooded areas, including from a swollen resaca along Central Boulevard. Docks along some of the resacas remained under water.

The crews have been working nonstop since Sunday, Johnston said.

“We are thankful that we’ve got a lot of patient folks in the city, but at the same time we are doing everything we can to get things back to normal,” he said.

The National Weather Service said parts of the city received as much as 9 inches of rain in a matter of hours on Sunday – a downpour that caught many people off-guard. The heaviest rain occurred between 3:30 and 8 a.m. Sunday.

The NWS in Brownsville is estimating a 30 percent chance of showers for today and a 20 percent chance for Friday, increasing to 40 percent for Saturday and Sunday.

The Office of Emergency Management can be reached at (956) 504-7405.