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“Yeah flood water keep a rollin’. Man it’s about to drive poor me insane.”

The lyrics of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Texas Flood” rang true over the Memorial Day weekend as Wimberley experienced one of those tragic Texas floods.

Now, Vaughan’s brother Jimmie will team up with Wimberley’s Ray Wylie Hubbard and many more star-studded musicians to try and ease the pain of those rollin’ flood waters with the Texas Flood of Love benefit concert at Nutty Brown Café on Aug 9.

“It’s left a deep deep wound,” Hubbard said. “There will be scars for a long time, but what we are doing here will hopefully help it heal.”

The morning of the flood, local singer/song writer Robyn Ludwick was looking at the devastation all around her.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Teams of high school students from around Texas and as far away as Georgia participated in a series of remotely operated vehicle underwater manipulation and navigation contests held Friday, June 26 in Corpus Christi with a student from Katherine Anne Porter School winning one of the categories.

The competition was part of Texas A&M University Corpus Christi’s College of Science and Engineering’s fifth “STEM Summer Institute: Underwater Robotics” educational program held June 20-26 on campus. 

AUSTIN, Texas – A letter stating a household is ineligible for disaster assistance may not be the

final word on a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) application.

The most common reasons for receiving a determination of ineligibility are:

 Adequate insurance coverage.

 Insufficient storm-related damage.

 Missing documentation needed to complete the assistance evaluation process.

Examples of missing documentation may include an insurance settlement letter, proof of

residence, proof of ownership of the damaged property, and proof that the damaged property was

the applicant’s primary residence at the time of the disaster. If instructed and needed, applicants

can simply submit missing documentation to FEMA online, by mail or fax, or by visiting a

Disaster Recovery Center.

Wimberley is beginning to switch from short-term mediation efforts to long-term recovery as the town looks to rebuild from the flood’s devastation. 

“This recovery process is just beginning, and it will evolve over the next 24 or even 35 months,” Wimberley City Administrator Don Ferguson said. “There are phases and we are heading into the long-term phase. It’s going to take time for the community to rebuild, but it will rebuild. People need to understand that the immediate time after the disaster was a sprint and now we are settling into a marathon.”

There is now a Volunteer Resource Center open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 200 Stillwater, in the South River business park off Ranch Road 12 near city hall. 

Sarah Jarosz came back home to Wimberley this weekend to lift spirits and raise money for the My Neighbors Keeper fundraiser Rocking the Recovery.

The benefit raised more than $20,000, so she certainly helped accomplish that feat, but it may have been her choice in song that highlighted the night.

Standing in front of a packed chapel, doubling as a beautiful music venue at Old Glory Ranch, Jarosz called Shake Russell and Kim Miller to the stage to sing.

On Saturday night though, the chapel certainly felt like the appropriate place as they broke out in song.

“As I went down in the river to pray, studying about that good old way, and who shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way,” they sang.

During the WISD School Board meeting of Monday June 22, the trustees voted to study the problem and to form a panel to discover the best way to institute a Drug and Alcohol Testing Policy. The board listened to both sides of the issue, with trustee Vicki McCuistion making the motion to form a citizens’ panel and was approved unanimously by the board.

Although the WISD Board previously voted to fund the testing, instituting a policy and how to implement it was not. Forming a panel to study the best way to implement the policy, if one,  would be made up of individuals of the community including past high school students and others.

During the citizen’s comments, the majority of the speakers were parents in favor of a drug testing policy that would randomly test athletes and all participants of extra-curricular activities. 

It’s official. After months of work and plenty of political consternation, the bill intended to protect Hays County groundwater has been signed into law.

Effective immediately, the bill expands the boundaries of the Barton Springs-Edwards Aquifer Conservation District to cover a portion of the Trinity Aquifer in Hays County that is not within a groundwater district.

“After a year of working on a solution and battling all session to save our wells, I am extremely pleased to announce HB 3405 is officially law,” Representative Jason Isaac said. “Without the passage of HB 3405, a portion of the Trinity Aquifer would have remained outside the boundaries of a groundwater district, and allowed for unlimited pumping at the detriment to people who live around a water exporting well field,” he said. 

The 70th Annual Wimberley VFW Rodeo will take place on July 2, 3, and 4th at the Veterans Park Rodeo Arena.

“We are once again are looking forward to putting on this Wimberley tradition for Central Texas,” said VFW Post Commander Donald Wheeler.  “It brings a strong sense of community, which is particularly important this year in the wake of the recent flood tragedy.  This years rodeo will be dedicated to the people who were affected by the flood as well as our Purple Heart Recipients.”

A man was killed in a one-car crash on Friday night just a few minutes after midnight.

The accident occurred when the road was wet at the intersection of Ranch Road 12 and County Road 1492.

Thomas Mitchell Whitmire, 40, of Houston, was pronounced dead at 1:54 a.m. on the way to Brackenridge Hospital via StarFlight.

According to a representative of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Whitmire was driving a 2001 GMC truck at “unsafe speeds for the condition” heading toward San Marcos on Ranch Road 12. 

At 12:09 a.m. the truck slid sideways before rolling over and hitting a telephone pole where the truck came to rest upside down.

Some of the best moments of high school sports are born because of rivalries, but the intense competition with your neighboring schools, year after year, can build up a level of resentment. The hope is that the resentment can stay on the field – not off of it.

On Tuesday, those rivals showed up in Wimberley, but there were no rivalries to be tamed. High schools from across the state of Texas brought students and coaches in to help rebuild Wimberley. It was caring beyond the competition.

“Once the flood happened, I had a lot of coaches calling that wanted to help,” Texan Head Coach Doug Warren said. “I knew that my greatest asset to the community was I could get man power here in a short amount of time. Even though I didn’t know those coaches. That is just how things are. When we needed help, I knew they were going to show up.”