Heavy rain leaves Santa Fe homes flooded

Several families in Santa Fe are cleaning up the flood damage left in their homes after heavy rain hit their neighborhoods overnight.

The yards on Avenue R still looked like lakes Thursday afternoon, many hours after the rain stopped falling.

“All night it was raining and raining—never stopped,” said Camerino Castro who moved into his home on Avenue R three weeks ago.

Castro says his little family watched the flood waters begin to seep into their new home just after midnight.

“Sadness, since it is my first time buying a house,” said Castro. “It’s something nobody wants to go through.”

The waters rose up to two inches inside—enough to destroy all his carpet. Water was more than a foot deep in his yard and covered his driveway.

“As you can see, you need a boat now to get to my house,” said Castro.

His next door neighbors evacuated once the water reached over their doorstep. Rudy Garza and his wife spent the night in the car.

“After a while we said, ‘It’s coming in. It’s time to go,’” said Garza.

He returned home to find three inches of rain inside, but it’s not the first time.

“We’ve replaced carpet five times, and last year when we got flooded, I thought, you know what? No more carpet,” said Garza. “So we got tile.”

Garza’s neighbor Jackie Talbert says Avenue R didn’t have a flooding problem until recently.

“The scene at my home right now, as you can see—it’s a lake,” said Talbert. “I’ve been out here 35 years.... We would get water somewhat high but not like this.”

She’s been trying to get to the bottom of why so much flooding has hit her neighborhood over the past two years.

“I’m not an engineer,” said Talbert. “I don’t know.”

Over on Avenue E 1/2 near Hwy 1764, Madi Elkins’ mother-in-law was captured on video pouring pitchers of water out of her daughter-in-law’s bedroom window Wednesday night.

“Water was getting close to the door, so I called my mother-in-law in panic, and she rushed over, and within minutes the water just started pouring in,” said Elkins.

The hardwood floors and other belongings are ruined after four inches of water went into the home, but Madi is happy her mother-in-law had her back through the flood.

“She’s awesome,” said Madi. “She’s pretty good.”

Galveston County’s Office of Emergency Management says Santa Fe was the hardest hit area in the county, in terms of damage, with flooding in homes, cars and on roads. The county is still working on assessing the full extent of that damage.