LAMPASAS COUNTY, Texas (KXXV) — This week, residents have seen the impact of recent flooding in Lampasas County/ but one local man shared a different view of the aftermath with 25 News’ Allison Hill.
“I messaged my buddy Gary and I was like, ‘How bad was it?’ He said, ‘It's bad, it's bad.’ The drone just kind of lets you get a different perspective of it. It's pretty indescribable. I’ve never seen anything like that in our little town, it was pretty surreal, it's saddening,” Cross said.
Outside of his day job, Jeff Cross spends some of his free time flying drones. On Sunday, when heavy rain led to devastating flooding across the area, he used his drone to capture the damage.
“That's one of the reasons why I got it, because the bird's eye view lets you see things that you can't really see, and little did I know that one day I'd be flying it over our golf course to help a friend of mine see how badly damaged the golf course was,” he said.
Later in the week, Cross captured even more dramatic footage of rising water in Burnet County. Flooding from the recent rainfall caused water levels at Lake Buchanan to rise so much that the dam had to be opened to release some of the overflow — something that hasn’t been done in years.
“I zoomed in to see the power of the water and the amount of the water that was coming out and then zoomed out a little bit, just to kind of see how much is there,” he said.
When asked what was going through his mind while filming, Cross responded, “I hope my drone doesn't die.”
“Because of how incredible it was?” Hill asked.
“Yeah, it is pretty incredible,” he replied. “We saw it on the remote for the drone, and then saw it on the TV when we got back home, and it was just, you know, it was like, ‘Wow,’ and just the power of the water and how much water they were releasing – that was something else.”
On Wednesday, Lampasas County was officially added to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s disaster declaration.
