Heavy downpours drenching South Texas, are causing floods like this washing over a bridge in Uvalde and forcing evacuations. More than six million people in 57 counties were under a National Weather Service flood watch, and in some areas flash flood warnings are in effect.
The extensive flooding that has inundated many areas of South and Central Texas has had an effect, directly or indirectly, on more than a dozen people from the Lawton area.
Two swift-water rescue teams and seven firefighters from the Lawton Fire Department left town Thursday, en route to south Texas at the request of the Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Among the firefighters was Graydon Gatlin, husband of Caitlin Gatlin, communications and marketing manager for the City of Lawton. She is a native of Sabinal, Texas, a small town 20 miles east of Uvalde, Texas.
A 74-year-old man was found dead in his vehicle in Uvalde County after being swept away by floodwaters around 10:30 a.m. Thursday.
The Uvalde Police Department said he “eluded law enforcement’s warnings not to proceed up the roadway,” but they did not specify if law enforcement officers made direct contact with the motorist before the incident, or if he disregarded barricades or other warnings.
The Uvalde Leader-News also reported that a section of the Nueces River Bridge on Farm to Market Road 481, or old Eagle Pass Road, collapsed during the flooding. The bridge is located approximately nine miles south of Uvalde.
And shortly after 11 a.m. Friday, the Uvalde Police Department urged residents at Chalk Bluff to evacuate due to a new rise on the Nueces River.
The publisher of the Uvalde Leader-News is Craig Garnett, formerly from Altus.
Mrs. Gatlin told The Constitution that a friend of hers who lives in Kerrville, Texas, “told me that a couple of nights ago, she had to move to higher ground” because the Guadalupe River flooded, “and she spent the night sleeping in her car.”
Camp Mystic at Hunt, Texas, where more than 20 children died in the catastrophic Guadalupe River flooding on July 4, 2025, is just west of Kerrville.
Walter “Dub” Wagnon, an employee at The Lawton Constitution, was born in Uvalde, Texas, and his mother, too, is a Uvalde native. The family moved to Oklahoma in 1983. Wagnon’s father is from Arnett and his family has lived and ranched in Ellis County since the 1890s.
“Dub” Wagnon maintains a house on the west side of the Nueces River, about 25 miles north of Uvalde; that house sits approximately 5 feet above the banks of the flooded river. In addition, Wagnon’s mother still owns a house that her parents built on the east side of the Nueces River, near Haby’s Crossing, in 1981.
