City and county battle deluge

Rain bombarded Comanche and Stephens County last Wednesday, causing flooding, damaging roads, washing away bridges, causing power outages and forcing evacuations.

District 3 County Commissioner Russell Morgan said there was seven inches of rain recorded at the county barn in Comanche and noting several people with rain gauges at their residences had their rain gauges overflowing.

“Every road in the county, District 3 I know, was pretty well affected,” Morgan said Monday morning. “Not all of them were washed out, but all of them had some kind of damage. There was either debris on the road or trees in the road. There was water coming across the roads.”

And the impact was felt well beyond Wednesday.

“We’re still finding stuff,” Morgan said. “We were still getting calls over the weekend and I’m sure there’s stuff we haven’t found that we will find. Some of the roads look good when you drive across them, but it’s undermining stuff. We’re relentlessly checking tin horns and other things trying to make sure we don’t have anything else. But at this time, we’ve got so many people working, we just can’t get everywhere to check everything. We just need it to dry out.”

Several roads developed holes or large gaps that are getting the top priority at the moment.

“We’re not even addressing trees right now, we’re just getting them off the roads into the ditches and trying to get our tin horns safe.”

Morgan said it reminded him of the flooding in May 2019.

“This one was mainly in the western part of the district,” Morgan said. “Luckily, we didn’t get that in the eastern part or we’d be in a lot worse shape. That’s what’s bad when it starts on one side and goes all the way across. The majority of the damage is basically west of 81 now. I’m not saying we don’t have some east problems, but the majority of the bad stuff is west of 81.

The storm also caused the City of Comanche workers to scramble for everyone from the fire department to the utility workers.

Twelve power poles were down east of town with two crews from OMPA joining Comanche workers on a 15-hour job to replace the poles.

“There were some high winds that we think took those down,” said Wayne McCasland, city manager. “(One nearby resident) had some trailers overturned and there were some trees damaged.”

City utilities manager Lester Lehew said his crew arrived on the scene around 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday and finished around 6:30 p.m.

The county assisted by donating some millings to secure the poles in place, as the ground was too wet to put the poles in directly.

“We appreciate the county giving us materials to pack around the poles,” McCasland said. “My appreciation goes out to everybody involved in the work as a whole. The community came together and did a great job.”

“We were watching the elevation of Cow Creek and making sure that everybody on Cow Creek was in a safe location,” McCasland said. “We did get with First Baptist and they set up a place for people to come to and get a meal. Cow Creek did crest on the north side and also started to crest on the south side. We did have voluntary evacuations and a couple of individuals had to be helped out by the fire department,” McCasland said.

The church also sent out to-go boxes to those working to get the city back up and running.

McCasland said Comanche Lake is now at normal capacity after being low for quite some time. 

“The lake is completely full, the spillways are overflowing and it’s beautiful out there right now,” McCasland said.