Gainesville Sends Swiftwater Crew to Central Texas Flood Response

GAINESVILLE, Texas — Gainesville Fire-Rescue sent five members of its Swiftwater Rescue Team out of the city on July 12, 2026, along with two apparatus and two rescue boats, to help with flood response elsewhere in Texas, according to a City of Gainesville staff report. The report says the crew carried out water rescues and evacuations tied to the flooding, working first in the Abilene area before moving to the Junction area.

Gainesville did not send the team on its own initiative. The staff report says the request reached the city through the Texas State Operations Center by way of Texas A&M Task Force 1, the organization that coordinates the state's swiftwater rescue program.

Television station KXII also reported the deployment. Its account of a requested swiftwater response for flooding outside the Gainesville area matches what the city put in its own staff report.

The local crew was one piece of a much larger operation. In a July 16, 2026 release, the Texas Division of Emergency Management said more than 2,350 state emergency responders and more than 1,400 vehicles were committed while dangerous flooding continued in the Hill Country, Central Texas and South Texas.

On July 12, the day Gainesville's team rolled out, TDEM said the state had activated swiftwater rescue boat squads, urban search-and-rescue teams, rescue swimmers, high-profile vehicles, helicopters and game warden rescue boats ahead of the flash-flood threat.

Texas A&M Task Force 1 serves as a Federal Emergency Management Agency urban search-and-rescue team and as a statewide team under TDEM, according to the organization. It counts more than 600 members drawn from 60 Texas organizations. Its water-rescue cache holds close to 30 boats kept ready for immediate deployment, along with rope and tethered-rescue equipment, the task force says.

Gainesville firefighters made a similar trip last summer. Six members of the department deployed with Texas A&M Task Force 1 in July 2025 to help after catastrophic flooding in Kerr County, according to a city release.

The city says its swiftwater capability grew out of a disaster at home. Gainesville developed the Swift Water Rescue Team after the deadly 2007 Pecan Creek flood, and Texas A&M Task Force 1 accepted the team in 2009 as a deployable state asset.

City Council minutes from 2007 record how bad that flood was. Between 10 and 12 inches of rain fell in a few hours. Three people died. Gainesville opened its Emergency Operations Center, and 22 fire departments from outside the city arrived with 167 personnel and 61 pieces of equipment.

The city later spent money on the creek itself. Council minutes show that on Oct. 18, 2011, members approved a contract worth $1,699,241.92 for Pecan Creek bridge replacements under the Pecan Creek Flood Damage Reduction Project.