After raging floods destroyed Central Texas this summer, private citizens banded together to help their neighbors. More than three months later, they are still rebuilding.

The Texas Hill Country experienced torrential rainfall from July 4 to 5, as rivers swelled into uncontrollable floods – sweeping away families, homes, and livelihoods, as The Dallas Express reported. At least 135 people died in the disaster, according to Texas Public Radio, including 71 adults and 31 children. 

Communities are still reeling, but neighbors and private volunteers are banding together to help them recover. 

Joe Bothne lives outside Austin near Big Sandy Creek, where massive waters swept through a neighborhood in the early hours of July 5, as The Dallas Express reported at the time. This came a day after the better-known floods began hitting Kerr County.

“It was just astounding, the community support that came out and the people that were trying to help,” Bothne told The Dallas Express. “That was the big epiphany.”

The Floods

After heavy rains, the National Weather Service began warning residents in Kerr County – west of Austin and San Antonio – of increasingly dire flooding at 1:14 a.m. on July 4, according to The Texas Tribune. The waters killed more than 100 victims in the area, including 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic.

Rivers across the region, like the Guadalupe, soon expanded into deadly rapids, sweeping across low-lying areas, as The Dallas Express reported. The floods expanded across a massive area, including Burnet, Kerr, Kendall, Gillespie, Tom Green, and Travis counties. The water even reached the Austin suburb of Georgetown in Williamson County, where the San Gabriel River flooded.

 

Outside the nearby suburb of Leander, the usually peaceful Big Sandy Creek swelled in the early hours of July 5 – sweeping through a rural community, as The Dallas Express reported at the time. According to KXAN, this disaster killed at least 10 people.

Surveillance cameras captured the water rapidly rising in Bothne’s cattle pasture from 3 a.m. to 3:22 a.m., he told The Dallas Express. 

“At 3 a.m., they were all calm, eating their hay and everything,” Bothne said. “By 3:12 a.m., the water was at 5 feet, roughly, and my brother’s house came floating by.”

Bothne said his brother’s house was originally a quarter mile down the road. When it came floating across the property, he called it both a “blessing and a curse.” 

“The blessing was that my cows were stuck in the pasture, and had it not been for the house knocking down the rails, I might have lost my cattle,” he said. “We’ve had 10 inches of rain in less than an hour, and it never flooded like this.”

When he first looked outside, Bothne said he was shocked. The floods picked up the house of his neighbor across the street and turned it 180 degrees. 

“We lost one of our neighbors there,” Bothne said. “He didn’t make it out.”

The Emergency Response

Bothne woke up to firefighters knocking on his door, trying to evacuate his family sometime between 4 and 4:30 a.m.

“I come flying down the stairs – locked and loaded, ready to shoot somebody – until my wife says, ‘It’s the fire department,’” he said. “At that point, the water was receding.”

Travis County 911 dispatch received the first water rescue call at 12:23 a.m. near Lago Vista, according to an official timeline obtained by The Dallas Express. From 1:58 a.m. to 6:50 a.m., rescuers responded to 36 water rescue calls in the area.

Rescuers reportedly saved a total of 25 people, as The Dallas Express reported at the time, though impassable roads delayed some rescue efforts

County officials claimed, to their knowledge, that no 911 calls went unanswered, according to a statement from late July obtained by The Dallas Express. But 41 calls were considered “abandoned” – meaning “the caller hung up before the dispatcher answered.” The Travis County Sheriff’s Office said it was taking a “comprehensive look” at all associated calls.

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“I have always known that if you need help, you call 911 and help will come,” said Jamie Hammonds, owner of Documenting Austin’s Streets and Homeless (DASH), to The Dallas Express. “This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever seen where people needed help, they called 911, and you got nothing.”

Around 2 a.m., Travis County’s STAR helicopter tried to respond to requests for help, but could not fly there due to “a lack of visibility and torrential rain,” according to the timeline. STAR aircraft began responding again at 2:35 a.m., but had to abort due to poor weather and visibility.

At 4:10 a.m., Big Sandy Creek had reached 21.6 feet downstream at Jonestown.

The Dallas Express requested further comment from a media representative in Travis County, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

The Recovery

Hammonds said he lives nearby. He visited the site for weeks afterward, where he raised awareness about the destruction and stated that he helped with recovery efforts. 

“We were going door to door, trying to see if anybody needed help,” he said. “There were no firemen, there were no cops, really, that whole day. It was just citizens, it was just people like me and other homeowners.”

The Dallas Express visited the neighborhood that morning and found widespread flooding and destruction. Some law enforcement, rescue, and utility workers were present, but the majority were residents and private volunteers.

 

Bothne said he felt the county’s response was “moderate.”

“I don’t get the feeling they jumped through hoops, but they went through the motions, and they helped people,” he said. “I would’ve expected to see these people out here the first day, but I didn’t see them.”

In the first week of October – three months later – Hammonds showed The Dallas Express around the still-recovering neighborhood. He walked to the washed-out creek bed down Juniper Road. 

“This whole area here was inaccessible for the first week,” Hammonds said. “You couldn’t get across because there was so much debris, the road was all washed out.”

Where Google Maps showed a home in February was now an empty lot. Across the street, a car lay next to the creek – completely crushed, and stripped of its metal, apparently from the floodwaters.

Many homes on Windy Valley Road suffered a similar fate. Where Google Maps showed homes in February, there were now empty foundations and vacant lots. Volunteers dotted the creekbed, picking up debris in trash bags. The floods also swept through homes on Sandy Meadow Circle, leaving a trail of destruction.

Soon after the flood, Leander Mayor Christine DeLisle said the city’s fire department helped with initial rescues – but soon, Travis County barred them from assisting further efforts. 

“I never imagined that Travis County would turn away our help. But that is what happened,” she wrote at the time. “I’ve only recently learned that after the initial rescues, Travis County began denying us access and asking our teams to stand down.”

“If I had known, I would have moved mountains to change that response,” she added. “I am devastated for the families who waited in anguish.”

More recently, DeLisle announced plans to step down since her family is relocating. The Dallas Express requested comment from Travis County, but did not receive a response.

Melanie Strong told The Dallas Express she volunteered to help with recovery after seeing pleas for help on social media. After witnessing the destruction firsthand, she used her background in construction, as well as her connections, to start sifting through and removing debris. She later testified before state House and Senate committees about what she observed.

Strong said she spoke to a family with a father, a pregnant mother, and a young son who were standing on their front porch, praying that the water would stop rising.

“I’ve walked down this entire road and have spoken to many of the residents who all had the same story: their calls for help went unanswered,” Strong said. “They called 911 and were told they had other calls ahead of them. Nobody came for them.”

Strong said she arrived at the scene on Tuesday following the flood. She said she leveraged her business relationships to order porta-potties, shipping containers, and tents for the recovery effort.

First responders were available and in the area, but she said she only saw them working the scene when volunteers found remains. 

“We’d have excavators out there digging. If all of a sudden there was a smell, everybody would stop, we cleared the area, we called the sheriff’s department,” she said. “That was really it.”

Bothne also confirmed seeing cadaver teams, which he said were some of the initial responders on the ground.  

Strong also expressed concern that Travis County did not request help from the Texas Department of Public Safety. She said that looting had become a consistent problem. While Texas DPS deployed in Kerr County, she said troopers were nowhere to be seen for days. She said they only responded to the area after she made officials aware of what she called an “urgent need” to guard property.

“We had a pallet of chainsaws go missing… We had people trying to loot in the middle of the day,” Strong said. “We had armed citizens walking around here at night to try to protect all these things for the community.”

The Dallas Express inquired with the county about whether it had requested assistance from the Texas DPS, but did not receive a response.

Some members of DPS worked at a multi-agency resource center to assist victims in replacing their IDs, according to a statement obtained by The Dallas Express. According to the timeline, the resource center was established on August 1. 

Strong said she showed members of the Texas State Guard some of the worst damage, which prompted their supervisors to step in, and they began working the scene.

Many of the deputies were reportedly frustrated with what Strong called a disorganized response. Bothne also emphasized the lack of coordination. 

“The biggest fallback in this whole thing was a lack of coordination,” he said. “If I were to characterize the worst failure, it’s everybody was vying for their 15 minutes of the sun, and nobody was coordinating activities.”

The Bigger Picture

Travis County Emergency Management, other responders, and nonprofits were set up at the Round Mountain Baptist Church when The Dallas Express visited the first week of October. 

After the July flooding, Samaritan’s Purse mobilized across the state, as The Dallas Express previously reported. 

Field Training Manager Shannon Daley, based near Dallas, told The Dallas Express that Samaritan’s Purse has not sent volunteer labor to lead efforts in the Leander area, but has instead helped with tasks such as repairing cars, rebuilding driveways, culverts, and fencing, and purchasing materials for home repairs. 

“We didn’t have volunteer labor on the ground helping lead out there, but we have done this critical need phase,” Daley said.

Samaritan’s Purse helps with three areas of recovery, according to Daley: disaster relief or “cleanup,” critical needs, and the rebuilding and repair phase. The group recently entered the final phase in Tom Green County, which contains San Angelo.

“I think of a family that I’m dealing with right now that’s just a sweet family. They have grown children, but they also have with them right now – getting ready to be three adopted foster kids,” Daley said.

Samaritan’s Purse helped the family move their home to higher ground after the floodwaters approached it, according to Daley. 

“They don’t want to experience this again,” she said. “Just think what a blessing it is to this family to put them into temporary housing for a couple of weeks while that happens – for this family who is giving of themselves to another generation.”

Daley also said Samaritan’s Purse delivered a camper to another family, whose roof was damaged in the storm, leading to mold growth, while the group helps replace their home.

“The little 3-year-old girl … could not wait to get in that camper,” Daley said. “She’d run around, and she’d stick her head out the door every once in a while and be like, ‘Thank you for my new home.’”

She called people to pray for the flood victims, especially the families who have lost a loved one. She also called volunteers to step in and help. 

“You just have to have willing hands and hearts to go and serve,” Daley said. “We’ll train you on what you need to do and how you need to do it.”