ST HEDWIG, Texas — Heavy rains swept across San Antonio Friday.
Some drivers were caught off guard. One vehicle got stuck in a low water crossing off Sleepy Hollow near Huebner Road around 5:30 Friday evening. No one was injured.
Multiple barriers around Bexar County closed low-lying roads to force drivers to turn around.
As the rains poured, one Bexar County Commissioner made a timely announcement. Tommy Calvert of Precinct 4 sent out a notice that life-saving infrastructure is on the way to an east Bexar County intersection that's haunted by the deaths of two people in 2021.
KENS 5 learned when barricades will return to Graytown Road and why they were removed in the first place.
"This has just taken too long," said Calvert, whose precinct includes the St. Hedwig area. "This has been a very haunting thing for me."
In October 2021, off Graytown Road near St. Hedwig, 5-year-old Alyssa Layman and 52-year-old Esther Rodriguez Conde were both swept away by rushing floodwaters. Each was riding in a separate car.
"The family thought that it was safe to cross because they knew there was a HALT arm there before. So that is double the tragedy," Calvert explained. "Sometimes common sense isn't so common in government because we should have had this taken care of a long time ago."
Now, a memorial sits at the roadside near the ravine off Graytown Road where the tragedy occurred.
Calvert says, without his knowledge, the barricade was removed by county workers due to a shortage of resources. While the barrier arms are automatically triggered to go down, they must manually be pulled back up.
"[The county] wanted St. Hedwig to pick it up when the rainwaters receded, but St. Hedwig didn't have staff," he explained.
50 of these HALT arms are scattered across the county. HALT stands for High-water Alert Lifesaving Technology.
Between 2007 and 2017, Bexar County invested $500 million in flood control initiatives, including these barriers. Not a single death occurred, Calvert said, except the two off Graytown Road.
"It's a tragedy not just in the death of those two individuals, but it's also a tragedy in government," said Calvert.
New HALT Arm barricades will be installed back at the intersection of Abbott Road and Graytown and at the intersection of Aztec Lane and FM 1518 near Randolph Air Force Base.
"It's been a struggle. We had a very odd budget session last year and for all the infrastructure we have in the county...the county commissioners were only whittled down to $10.5 million," said Calvert. "I managed to squeeze out some of the funding for this, then we had the county manager finally kick in and squeeze out some money from savings on another project in my precinct to merry the money to make this happen."
Calvert says St. Hedwig agreed to partner with the county to raise the barricade off Graytown Road once floodwaters recede.
He plans to also push for funding for lights in that area because the unincorporated county doesn't have lighting right now. The drownings in October 2021 occurred in the early morning when it was still dark.
"It's on the way to Tradition Elementary School in the East Central School district and there's a middle school that's going to be built on that same road," he explained, referring to Graytown Road. "So a lot of families will be traversing."
County leaders are also looking to have a more regional view and update of our watershed plan due to the influx of people moving to east Bexar County. The increased population is changing the topography of the waterflow, Calvert explained, causing more impervious cover, leading rapid waters into ravines just like the one off Graytown Road.
The parts for the new HALT arms will be delivered by the end of the month and should be installed by August.
For a look at real-time road closures around Bexar County due to flooding, visit bexarflood.org.