Fort Worth hunkers down for heavy midweek rain, storms

Car after car, Fort Worth residents lined up for free sandbags ahead of the potential heavy rain on Wednesday.

"Just trying to take precautions, just in case, preparing, rather be safe than sorry," said Raquel Delgado, a Fort Worth resident.

"To protect my house," said Louis Madrid. "It got a quite a bit of people's attention.

So much so that the city ran out of sandbags in less than two hours, leaving dozens of residents without them.

"If we keep having these storms, then we need more sandbags, or we need better solutions to the infrastructure problems," said resident Cole Harrison. "Cause if it keeps storms like this for whatever reason, then we need to do something to make sure people's houses are protected."

City officials said they handed out about 1,500 sandbags at two locations on Wednesday, far more than expected.

"This was, today, was a learning curve for us, because we've never ran out of sandbags," said Fort Worth Transportation and Public Works operations officer Juan Cadena.

Throughout the day, crews were working across the city, focusing on flood-prone areas, inspecting drainage systems, and clearing debris. In April, this video went viral of west 7th, showing cars in waist deep water.. people climbing through their windows to get out. Fort Worth has a $110 million fix to stop the flooding in this area, but construction won't start until 2029.

"The existing system is undersized, it's just not capable of handling all the flood waters coming in that direction," Cadena said. "If you don't live in the area, your best bet is to stay away from it."

Officials said, despite the prep work they've done, there are areas that may flood when extreme weather hits.

"If citizens have any questions or concerns the My Fort Worth app, is the quickest and easiest way to get in touch with us," said Cadena.

The City of Fort Worth has a real-time map that tracks high water alerts in the area. This will tell you which intersections have flooding before you head out the door.