More than three months after deadly floods struck Central Texas, volunteers are planning to brighten up the season for kids in a hard-hit community outside Austin.
The nonprofit Core of Volunteers is planning a “Trunk o’ Treat” for kids in the rural Sandy Creek neighborhood near Leander, which was hit by deadly flooding on July 5. The event is tentatively planned for October 25, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Round Mountain Baptist Church.
“Those kids have been through a lot, so these holidays mean everything at this point,” said Core of Volunteers Vice President Tricia Lee Hernandez to The Dallas Express. “We have to put normalcy back into these kids’ lives.”
Organizers may move the event to November 1 due to rain, Hernandez said. The family-friendly event promises candy, sports cars, food, firefighters, bounce houses, musicians, a face painter, a balloon artist, and pumpkin painting.
“It just has to be fun and happy,” Hernandez said. “It’s going to be amazing.”
The kids in Sandy Creek have been through repeated tragedies, according to Hernandez.
Just more than a month after the flood, as families prepared to send kids back to school, volunteers held a toy drive. Students in Leander ISD returned to school on August 13.
“There was a bus crash,” Hernandez said.
That day, according to KVUE, a school bus coming from a local elementary school rolled over on Nameless Road, which leads to the Sandy Creek community.
At the time, 46 students were on board – 16 of whom went to the hospital. Officials later cited the bus driver for the accident.
“First day of school, they were all excited because we also had a backpack drive. They’re all excited, had their new backpacks,” Hernandez said. “They were so excited that day going home, and in a bus crash.”
So volunteers are trying to encourage kids with the upcoming “Trunk o’ Treat” event, according to Hernandez.
“We have to show them some normalcy again,” she stressed.
Another group has already stepped in to serve Thanksgiving meals to families, according to Hernandez.
Core of Volunteers is also planning a Christmas celebration, she said, and someone has already donated 83 boxes of toys. Hernandez said she hopes to bring motorcycles from Dallas to deliver gifts.
“For Christmas, we’re also taking in nursing homes,” Hernandez added.
Core of Volunteers has a vetting process, and leaders “don’t let anybody take advantage,” according to Hernandez. She said the group is open to helping others with all sorts of needs – including in the neighboring city of Liberty Hill, which was also hit by flooding.
The Recovery
The Texas Hill Country saw torrential rainfall from July 4 to 5, as rivers swelled into uncontrollable floods, sweeping away families, homes, and livelihoods, as The Dallas Express previously reported.
At least 135 people died in the disaster, including 71 adults and 31 children.
Outside the nearby suburb of Leander, the usually peaceful Big Sandy Creek swelled in the early hours of July 5 – sweeping through the surrounding neighborhood, killing at least 10 people.
Core of Volunteers began helping with the recovery just days after the floods struck. As The Dallas Express previously reported, some first responders were present the morning after, but the majority were residents and private volunteers.
County officials previously claimed they knew of no unanswered 911 calls that morning; yet, 41 calls were considered “abandoned” – meaning “the caller hung up before the dispatcher answered.”
“We had friends calling us that had family members that live over there, like, ‘What do we do? No one is coming to help,” Hernandez said. “Everybody just jumped in.”
Volunteers from the neighborhood, across the state, and across America streamed in to help with the recovery. Hernandez said she fed and housed 41 firefighters from Alabama.
Still, she felt Travis County’s response was lackluster.
“We couldn’t get any help from anywhere,” Hernandez said. “My daughter is 15 years old, and I had her and her friends out there volunteering to help. She had to witness a body being pulled from the creek – kids shouldn’t have to see that. We shouldn’t even have to see that, that’s not our job.”
Looting became a persistent problem during the recovery, as The Dallas Express reported. At one point, an entire pallet of donated chainsaws went missing. After several days, troopers with the Department of Public Safety responded to help guard the property.
In the beginning, volunteer groups were uncoordinated and were “stepping on each other’s toes,” Hernandez said. Now, they have begun coordinating through the Core CARE Program – previously known as adopt-a-family – assigning specific volunteers or groups to each family, with a “care captain” to provide monthly care packages and regular check-ins.
Initially, the community needed essentials like water and toilet paper; now, residents need to rebuild.
“Everything we’ve gotten has been for free, but we had to transition because in the beginning it would come from just the ‘average Joe,’ people that just wanted to help,” Hernandez said. “Now we need bigger stuff, we need contractors.”
“Being three and a half months in, you can’t get that much stuff for free anymore. You tap out your resources,” she added.
Numerous other volunteer groups have been helping with the recovery, according to Hernandez – including the Austin Disaster Relief Network, Cajun Navy 2016, the Round Mountain Baptist Church, and the Travis County Recovery Alliance.
Volunteers are expecting Travis County to begin disbursing funds soon to support the rebuilding process, according to Hernandez.
“It was really hard,” she said. “There’s still so much stuff to do.”