Underwater
LOURDES SALINAS STOOD AT THE end of her street and watched as her neighborhood filled with water.
She awoke on the morning of June 20, 2018, to the sound of heavy rain pouring off the roof of her white-brick home. Salinas grabbed an umbrella and hurried through the front yard, past a chain-link fence where a handwritten sign instructs visitors to grite, yell, in the absence of a doorbell. She dodged potholes brimming with water as she made her way down the slick slope of a hill. Salinas paused on the edge of North Baseline Road, which divides her colonia, Indian Hills, into its east and west sides. A sodden American flag hung in a neighbor’s front lawn behind her; nearby, a sign posted on a tree read “Keep Texas beautiful. Proud community.” The salmon-colored mini-market across the street advertised milk, eggs, tacos, Sunday barbacoa; just beyond, rain filled front lawns, soaking old car parts and clothes hung out to dry. Kids swam in the murky water, dotted with debris and trash, as though it were a pool. A canal close by threatened to overflow. Salinas, now 59, became frantic. “Oh my god, get out of the colonia!” she shouted. “Get your families, get out, get out!”
Salinas’ Hidalgo County colonia, along with many poor, unincorporated border communities in the Rio Grande Valley, holds water like a bowl; even small storms can strand residents for days. But this time was different. The rain was relentless, pouring down from her home at the top of
