Helping hands after the flood

Rain was still falling and rivers and creeks were rising when the first of thousands of volunteers began shelter and cleanup efforts for those in the Highland Lakes affected by the Fourth of July weekend flood. By Sunday, July 6, as flood warnings continued to light up mobile phone screens, homes were being mucked out, trash removed, roads fixed, and people fed. 

Three weeks later, as this story was being written, people were still asking for help and the help kept coming.

Even as the tempest raged, first responders began rescues and recovery while organizations like Elevate Church and Ark of Highland Lakes mobilized to provide shelter, food, and comfort. At the same time, those groups set up the structure to quickly and efficiently dispatch volunteers and equipment for cleanup.

Highland Lakes VFW Post 6974 in Burnet started cooking, feeding around 2,000 people three meals a day the first week after the flood. As of July 23, post volunteers were still going strong, offering breakfast and dinner to anyone and lunch to first responders, volunteers, and people in need. 

Young people have been involved, too. Students from the Burnet FFA, Faith Academy of Marble Falls, and other organizations booted up to muck out. 

Contractors dedicated their crews to training and deployment and loaned their large equipment day after day after day. Businesses closed so owners and employees could serve meals, run tractors, fill trash bags, and muck out houses.

Food came from everywhere. Locally, volunteers were fed by Chicken Express, H-E-B, Numinous Coffee Roasters, Blue Bonnet Cafe, Chick-fil-A, Adele’s Restaurant, The Real New Orleans Style Restaurant, and Lost Roads Baking Co., among many others. 

Numerous out-of-area establishments also sent food, including Operation BBQ Relief in Kansas City, Missouri, Bayou Boys Catering from the Houston area, and Hurtado Barbecue of Fort Worth.

“Two professional barbecue catering crews out of Dallas and Fort Worth brought food on multiple days,” said Alex Payson, the owner of Numinous Coffee Roasters and an Ark volunteer in charge of meal distribution. “The Bayou Boys Catering not only let us borrow their refrigerated trailer for three weeks now, they filled it with sandwiches, then came back and filled it again.” 

Not just sandwiches, Payson continued. 

“They brought at least 6,500 sandwiches packed in boxes with a granola bar, a bag of chips, and an encouraging message. A week after the flood, they set up a kitchen and cooked up another thousand hot meals.” 

Along with around 15 local restaurants, at least 30 individuals have been bringing food, usually 50-100 meals each. 

“One grandmother comes every single day with two homemade pies or two homemade cakes,” Payson said. “She drops them off at 10 a.m. every day. It has been a pretty heartwarming and amazing thing to see.” 

Elevate Church in Marble Falls canceled Sunday services on July 6 at its two campuses, 700 and 705 Gateway Parkway, so congregants could help with cleanup instead.

Wearing bright red T-shirts with “Serve Team” on the back and “Love This City” on the front, volunteers of all ages immediately went to work clearing flood-ravaged sites in Burnet and Marble Falls. They were organized and active by 9 p.m. Friday, July 4, before the worst of the flooding hit Saturday morning. Three weeks later, they were still hard at work.

“The church should be the first to respond immediately when disasters happen,” said Elevate Senior Pastor Shane Wenger. “We believe Jesus came to serve. We believe in staying in touch with humanity and having a heart for people. We love to serve and look more like Him.”

Around 80 volunteers from across the United States are staying at Elevate’s two campuses, where they are fed three meals a day between deployments to sites in Burnet, Marble Falls, and Kerr County. The church is the staging ground for God’s Pit Crew, a nonprofit disaster response group based in Danville, Virginia, and Convoy of Hope, a nonprofit humanitarian group out of Springfield, Missouri. Both organizations deployed across the Hill Country, wherever they were needed.

Tree of Life Church in New Braunfels sent at least 20 people to work with Elevate to “paint the town red” with “Love this City” volunteers. 

The Burnet VFW suspended its regular activities, including bingo and the canteen, to feed anyone needing a hot meal. Much of the food and supplies are being sent by the Texas Department of the Veterans of Foreign War.

“The state VFW reached out to us to help, even though we are an extremely small post, one of the smallest in Texas,” said VFW Post 6974 Commander Sean Jones. “But we are people with big hearts. We have the ability to do it, and so we are doing it.”

The post’s recovery operation runs 18 hours a day. 

“People from all over the country are showing up here to help,” Jones said. “I don’t have the words to say how really proud I am of our people. Our volunteers, they are doing amazing things. It’s been overwhelming.” 

Local students have also pitched in. Cedar Stays RV Park is in one of the worst-hit areas on RR 1431, less than a mile from Faith Academy of Marble Falls. Some 50 RVs, which were permanent homes for many of the residents, were washed away by a raging Hamilton Creek. When the Faith Academy Flames football team showed up for practice on Monday, July 7, Coach Jay Silver suggested they help the RV park’s residents instead. 

“It was more important for us to do something for the community than to go out there and practice when all this was happening,” Silver said. “We’re just playing a game. We’re trying to raise godly men here, so it really wasn’t a thought. We just knew we needed to do this.” 

The young athletes felt the same way. 

“It was good to help people,” said 17-year-old Andrew Houy. “We grabbed trash bags and went straight to cleaning up.” 

Andrew also worked with his church youth group at Creekside Cabins, just  another mile upstream.

“It was crazy there,” he said. “Basically, the creek usually has no flowing water. The water got up to the roofs of the buildings. It was crazy to see.”

Sawyer Jones, 17, remembers getting covered in so much mud it was hard to move around, but he has no regrets. Everyone should get involved in helping, he said.

“It’s the community, it’s what we do,” he said. “We have to help. You’re not doing any good sitting at home, so come help.”

Burnet FFA leader Brandon Evans sent out a call for volunteers on Monday, July 7. They deployed from the Burnet High School ag shop to clean homes and also rebuild fences and hand out collected donations to flood victims.

“We are overwhelmed by the support of our community,” Evans wrote on the FFA’s Facebook page. They collected and distributed gift cards from H-E-B, Walmart, Lowe’s, and The Home Depot, dog and cat food, water, and bedding. 

The work is not over. Readers will have this story in their hands one month after the floods and help still will be needed. 

“We thought things were dwindling after a week, but more people found out about us,” said Leslie Coleman, a volunteer from First Baptist Church of Marble Falls and Ark of Highland Lakes. “We called H-E-B and asked for more people, and more came. They are coming from all over, like Temple, everywhere. They are driving here to help us.”

Coleman’s husband, Jason, has been training muck-out teams. He pointed to the tremendous number of people who have shown up to help. 

“Seven hundred volunteers have come through (the Ark’s) system to train,” he said. “In a city of 6,000, we’ve had 700 volunteers. And that’s not everybody; that’s just the Ark. There are lots of others helping, too. I think that’s incredible.” 

The Picayune Magazine is aware there are many, many more people, businesses, and organizations involved in flood recovery efforts than we could possibly mention in this story. If we missed you, our apologies and thank you for all you do. Shoot us an email. Our coverage continues. 

suzanne@thepicayune.com