In flood-ravaged Hill Country towns, friends, families and strangers rush in to help with cleanup

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

---

HUNT — Every day since last Saturday, Clemente Sánchez has gathered workers to help clear debris and destruction that a furious, 30-foot flood left in its wake in this small community wedged between the north and south forks of the Guadalupe River.

Sánchez, who owns a tree-clearing company in Ingram, seven miles further downriver, said he’s not charging people for cutting up downed trees and clearing debris from their property.

“I know my clients can afford it,” said Sanchez, who was born in Mexico and moved to Ingram 25 years ago. “But I don’t care. They need the help.”

Sánchez’s unselfish act isn’t unique in the communities along the Guadalupe that are still searching for missing people and assessing the extensive damage from the July 4 flood that has killed 120 people and counting throughout Central Texas.

Again and again, people in the tight-knit communities along this stretch of the river have turned to each other for comfort and help over the past week. And many have been calling Sánchez.

For Sánchez, every day starts before 8 a.m. He expects his six full-time workers, whom he is still paying, to be ready to hit the road to Hunt, where they go from house to house, looking for anyone who could use help clearing away ruined furniture, tree trunks and branches.

Jesus Garcia, a 45-year-old from Guanajuato, Mexico, flew in last week to see family and friends in Ingram. But when he learned that Sánchez was rounding up volunteers, he offered to lend a hand. He’s shown up almost every day, raking leaves and scattered detritus at homes where the water ripped through. He helps load the furniture onto the back of Sánchez’s truck. With a hand-held saw, he slices through tree trunks.

“I had to do something,” Garcia said. “In Mexico, there have been natural disasters too, and others have helped us, so why not help them?”

That question has echoed through many neighborhoods here. In hard-hit areas of Kerrville, local helpers have poured in from all over town, residents said.

Dianne McCracken, a Kerrville native, said she was staying in an RV next to the river with her husband Francis when a man started banging at their door at 3 a.m. on July 4.

You need to get out because the river’s here, Dianne remembers him yelling before he ran away.

The couple took shelter on higher ground until the river receded. When they returned, the RV had been destroyed. She said the house she rents in town also suffered significant damage.

On Thursday afternoon, six family members and friends arrived at the house to help them pick up the pieces. Her son-in-law, Gabe, pulled soaked insulation from the walls and piled it on the floor. The rest of the crew collected ruined possessions in bags and swept caked-up mud and insulation onto tarps they laid on the floor.

Dianne, 67, said before the flood, she would have been too proud to ask for help, or accept it. But neither the RV nor the rental home had flood insurance. She’ll have to take out at least $100,000 in loans, she believes, to recover fully from the damage.

Next door, Yvette Cantu emptied her mother’s garage. The 57-year-old Fredericksburg resident had driven in Thursday morning to lend a hand to her 77-year-old mom — who had fled the home when the flooding reached her street. While the water hadn’t reached the house, which sits near the river, her storage closet outside the house sustained some damage. Cantu lined up personal belongings, a cooler, and some old photos.

“She didn’t know if her house was there” after she left, Cantu said.

Many Texans have stepped up to help strangers in the Hill Country, including Steve Rodriguez, 41, a New Braunfels native who had been following the news of the floods through social media Friday morning, and he said he decided he wouldn’t sit around anymore. So he drove almost 100 miles west, joined a long line of trucks just before Hunt at a checkpoint, and told the guard he was there to volunteer.

When he saw the first house belonging to Nancy Allery, who was not in Hunt when the flood struck her home, he offered Allery his help, joining Sanchez, whose crew was already working on the property. He moved damaged furniture, silverware and a paddleboard out of the house, loading it into a truck and using a leaf blower to clear the front yard of dirt.

Behind Allery’s house, Sánchez’s son, Adrian, shoveled dirt off her walkway. He’d been there early that morning, piling the dirt in the ground next to the same river that moved it up. Allery and other property owners handed out cold water and plates of food: burritos, vegetables and some chips from a relief organization.

The 18-year-old grew up here. Helping his neighbors is his natural instinct. His dad had already volunteered to help another neighbor when the crew was done with Allery’s home.

“I think it’s nice of him,” he said of his dad’s efforts. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”