UVALDE, Texas — It’s the start of a slow cleanup process in Uvalde County after floods devastated home after home.
Structures are still standing, but the walls hide a lot of damage.
In a backyard in Uvalde, Texas, a pool wrapped around a tree shows just how strong the waters were that poured into the city from multiple rivers.
Homeowner Jose Lopez and his family are staying with relatives as all the damaged items get pulled from inside their home. We’re talking appliances, clothes, memorabilia.
You discover just how much you can accumulate in a house when you’ve lived in it for years. But it’s not just stuff, walls will have to be torn down throughout the first floor of the Lopez’s home as they were totally seeped through with the feet of floodwaters and cabinets were caked in inches of mud.
It all means a long time away from home. But everyone seems to be finding a silver lining.
They still have each other; the damage could have been worse.
“We took our documents, kids’ pictures…we couldn’t save everything. But the night before, we started, like, packing a bag, just in case, you know. But as long as we’ve lived here, nothing’s ever, you know, water has never gone that far. Even when it flooded back in 2015, it never, we’ve never seen as much water as we did,” Lopez said. “And we actually had to get evacuated that, we got out of here in a boat.”
The floodwaters have cleared, and the sidewalks and streets are usable again.
Lopez said as his family has been cleaning up, they’ve taken out a bunch of trailers absolutely full of things that just can’t be salvaged. They are up to their sixth trailer, with likely more to come.