Business View - February 2016 101
seven dead and more than 100 injured. The damage
was $15 million - $116 million in today’s dollars. Late
one afternoon in 1979, another tornado struck the
heavily populated southern sections of the city, and
to this day, that particular April 10th is remembered
as “Terrible Tuesday.” 42 people died and 1,800 were
injured; 20,000 were left homeless. The bill was $400
million - $1.3 billion in today’s dollars.
Fortunately for Wichita Falls, those problems are in
its past. They were solved by its people who applied
their characteristic qualities of hard work, sacrifice,
determination, and community spirit in order to per-
severe in the face of one of Mother Nature’s harsher
incarnations. But In 2010, Mother Nature decided to
strike again, though not this time as a violent tornado;
this time she came in the form of a prolonged drought
which left the city with a different problem to solve:
how to supply its citizens with enough potable water
from its severely depleted lakes.
Glenn Barham is the mayor of Wichita Falls. He was
elected in 2010, just in time for the weather to get re-
ally hot. He tells the story of how the city confronted
the problem of drought head-on, once again by apply-
ing its characteristic qualities of sacrifice, hard work,
determination, and community spirit. “In 2011, Wichi-
ta Falls went through its worst summer in recorded his-
tory,” he begins. “We had over 100 days of 100 degree
temperature; 50 consecutive days of 100 degree plus
temperatures, which broke the old record of 35 con-
secutive days. Coupled with those high temperatures
in 2011, we had our worst year in history of rainfall.
We typically average 28+ inches of rain per year – that
year, we had 13.5. 2012 wasn’t much better, though
the temperatures moderated a little bit; we had 50
days of 100 degrees plus, but we also had another
year of low rainfall – about 19 inches, which is two-
thirds of what our normal average was. The last year of
the drought, our water levels on our two primary lakes,
Lake Arrowhead and Lake Kickapoo, averaged below
20 percent.”
Barham and the City Council decided there were two
ways in which the problem could be most suitably ad-
dressed. One was conservation. Barham explains: “We
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Wichita Falls, Texas
WHAT:
A city of 104,000
WHERE:
North Texas, near the Oklahoma border
WEBSITE
:
INFRASTRUCTURE
