CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Matthew Rowe and Tyrene Boyd picked up the sandbags scattered around their house, tossing them into a pile in their garage.
The water from the nearby ditches that flooded didn’t get into their house.
This time.
About a year ago, they remember rainwater from the ditch next to their house overflowing into their front yard, driveway, and inside their home.
They woke up at 3 a.m. and they stepped into about an inch or two of water inside their house. Walking around, they found that the water had gotten into their kitchen, garage, and living room.
Some items were damaged from the flood.
“From kids electric scooters to (other stuff), we had a lot blankets that we had to use,” Rowe said, describing what the rainwater damage.
“The interior was like rugs. We just had to throw stuff out,” Boyd said.
On Sunday when it rained heavily in Flour Bluff, the ditch once again overflowed and flooded their yard and driveway, but didn’t get into their home.
They said it’s happened many times.
“It’s something that we don’t like to deal with. We get rain anxiety and I’ve never had that before. I actually love the rain,” Rowe said.
They said there’s only one drain on Caribbean Drive where they live, and it’s not big enough to take in all the rainwater in such a short amount of time.
Just five inches of rain will flood the ditch and because they live next to it, they get the most amount of flooding out of the entire neighborhood.
“Put a larger drain in there or put additional drainage. Maybe even during a rain event if they could just have a pump truck or something just to kind of relieve a temporary thing,” Rowe said.
They said they’ve emailed the City of Corpus Christi multiple times and they said no one ever came out to inspect the area or flush the water out.
The City of Corpus Christi told KRIS 6 News their Laguna Shores project that they finished earlier this summer expanded three channels in the area.
That allows water to drain from neighborhood ditches into those channels and then into the Laguna Madre.
However, Rowe and Boyd said that wasn’t enough to stop flooding and they are just hoping the city will help drain their problems away
“I think if the drainage was fixed, we would not have this problem,” Rowe said.
However, after KRIS 6 News sent over pictures of the flooding from Sunday provided by Rowe and Boyd, the city responded and said the city’s public works department is putting in a work order and will be addressing the issue.
