11:15 this Monday morning showing
you a live look right now at
the roads in Tarrant County.
This is in Fort Worth on Rosedale
and if you know that area,
you know that that is a lot
of water for that space.
Certainly a reminder to be careful
when you're getting out and about.
Authorities are asking you to stay
home if you don't absolutely have to
get on the roadways because it has
been a busy 24 hours for our first
responders right now on the phone.
We are joined by Matt Zavadsky
from MedStar Matt.
I want to thank you for joining us.
I know your crews have been very busy.
How would you describe what they are?
Seeing right now on our roadways.
Well, it's sort of your worst nightmare
mark because we always had such a dry spell
that a lot of the oil and the residue,
things that are on the pavement
now with the water has really made
the roads very, very slippery.
In addition to the high water issues that
we're having throughout the Community,
talking to Maria Ruiz and our
weather department about the rain
totals that we are getting near,
and when you've got a situation where
it has been dry all summer long,
that means those compacted grounds
just don't hold this water well.
They're heading to the roadways.
What's your advice for drivers right now?
What mark you and the team
have done a great job?
If you don't need to go out,
not a good time to be out driving at all.
However, if you do need to go out and drive,
leave early. Drive very slowly.
Certainly don't drive distracted.
This is not a time to try and be,
you know, checking, checking the WF
a weather app while you're driving.
Do that before you leave.
Avoid standing water on the roadways.
Try and drive on the the tracks
of the cars in front of you.
If you can.
Always we say turn around,
don't drown all of those things really come
into play here and for for goodness sakes.
If you do see a crash on the side of
the road with first responders there,
give them a lot of room to
work and slow down.
We certainly don't want to have first
responders struck while they're
on the scenes of these calls.
A lot of times when we talk about
severe weather here in North Texas,
it's high winds.
It's a threat of tornadoes.
This volume of rain, though,
this threat of flash flooding,
is a little bit different than
folks here are typically used to.
How would you compare this
to other severe storms that
you've seen in North Texas?
Yeah, I think it took a lot of people
by surprise because we were again so
used to being the hot dry summer.
And you know, with with the rain starting
overnight and then people just getting up
and doing their normal routine and heading
out just like they would any other commute.
This is not like any other normal commute.
You know we've responded to 34 car
crashes since the rain began last night.
Ten of those occurred during
the morning rush.
Three of those crashes were rollovers.
People just aren't accustomed to this,
and people just really need to pay attention.
Slow down, take their time.
And don't drive distracted
again, given that this is,
these are conditions that we're
just not really used to here.
When you hear the term flooding,
you typically think low lying areas,
but are there specific problem areas
you should be on the lookout for?
Or is this pretty widespread?
It is very widespread and it can can
you can come across a road covered
roadway without even really noticing it.
You know, if people think, Oh yeah,
the roads that we normally see
the little indicators of how
many feet is this sign under,
but literally just under overpasses
or just very small low lying areas on
the highway can cause enough of a a
ponding to cause a car to hydroplane and
roll over like we've seen this morning.
You talked about the rate of incidents that
you guys have been dealing with already.
Do you see that slowing down or is it
picking up based on the conditions out there?
We have not seen any slowing whatsoever now.
Hopefully if the rain does
begin to abate as you all are
predicting later on this afternoon,
the afternoon commute might
be a little bit easier,
but you know it's going to take a
while for this standing water that's
accumulated on these roadways to go away.
So people need to be as diligent
on the afternoon commute as we've
asked them to be during the
morning commute and throughout the
day. And as we've seen,
it's not just drivers that
you're asking to be careful.
We've had pedestrians
who've run into issues too.
You know, it's interesting.
We've had four auto pedestrian
crashes out since 9:00 o'clock last
night mixed into this because cars
can't stop as quickly as they can.
People honestly are are using
umbrellas probably for the
first time since June perhaps,
and the umbrellas cause of visibility issue,
and people are trying to run
through the rain and they're not
waiting to cross at crosswalks.
They're going in between
parked cars downtown.
We've had a couple of pretty
significant auto pedestrian crashes
and we get really worried about
kids that are walking to and from
school in this type of weather.
You can't see as well as a driver,
you can't stop as well.
So just everybody needs to be hyper
vigilant as we go into the afternoon.
Well, just like cars can't help
tell how deep that water is,
pedestrians can't either.
So definitely some obstacles when
you're walking through those puddles.
To a good reminder,
Matt Zavadsky from MedStar,
thank you for joining us this morning.
Thank you, mark.