Disaster upstream

Elgin weathered three days of flood watches over the holiday weekend without a single water rescue while catastrophic flooding claimed scores of lives farther west, emergency managers reported.

Successive watches and hazardous weather advisories July 4-7 warned that heavy rainfall could push the Colorado River over its banks. Lower Colorado River Authority gauges showed the 72-hour total already surpassed July’s rainfall average, but that paled beside Hill Country downpours that topped 10 inches in just a few hours.

“It’s tough, we want to go help, but we also need to make sure we protect our citizens,” said Mark Wobus, assistant chief of Bastrop/Travis County ESD No. 1, which serves the greater Elgin area.