10 years ago, a flood devastated this Texas town. The road to recovery has been long

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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."

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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.

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