Treaty Oak serves as community hub for flood relief
Editor’s Note: This is part 1 of a 2-part series.
On July 4, as news of the devastating flood event along the Upper Guadalupe River reached the surrounding communities, people and organizations began gearing up across Hays County to provide help.
In Dripping Springs, a small group of employees from Treaty Oak Distillery discussed a plan to assist, starting with a text message from Lindsey Pesek, director of sales.
“If I can find a point of contact to intake donations, would you guys be interested in staging a drop point at the distillery for key things like bleach, cleaning supplies, toiletries, water, first aide supplies etc.?” Lindsey messaged. “My heart is breaking for my friends and the community out there.”
The team agreed and announced on social media that Treaty Oak would be open for donation drop-offs starting on Monday, July 7. The plan was to collect supplies, load up their personal vehicles, roll out to Kerrville and distribute the supplies. But when they came in on Sunday to start prepping the space, people started arriving early with donations.
“We came to move tables, and I was typing up signs, like this is going to go here, this is going to go here… and then people just started coming in,” said Leah Robarts, catering and sales manager.
It started with one lady who brought a couple of bags of paper towels. They told her to go ahead and leave them on the dock. Within an hour and a half, it was clear that their personal vehicles weren’t going to be enough.
“From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., the cars never stopped,” said Angie Kabirzadeh, food and beverage director. “There was a line of cars just patiently waiting.”
During the last two hours, when the dock was already full, it started raining.
“People jumped out of their cars and started bringing everything off the dock and getting it inside so it wouldn’t get wet or ruined,” Leah said.
Even the young children were hustling and helping out.
“I think my first time losing it, like full-on cry face, was when this little girl walked up with a box of toys because she wanted to give them to all the little kids that didn’t have any toys,” Angie said. “That was day one.”
On Monday, which was supposed to be the first day of collection, they had to open up another building on site to hold more donations.
“It just started pouring in on its own naturally from the community. It just evolved from there,” Lindsey said. “It was a very small idea, but it became a huge undertaking.”
Within the first two days, the Knights of Columbus got involved — spearheaded by Jimmy Winkler, who was named the group’s emergency coordinator just two days before the flood.
“We were loading Jimmy up with pallets for search and rescue because at that point we were still finding people that were able to be rescued,” Angie said. “We were sending out shovels, all these key things that weren’t in everybody’s initial dropoffs.”
Susan and Greg Plummer, the owners of Suds Monkey also got involved, connecting the group with a friend from Wimberley, Vanessa Jones, who wanted to lend her airplanes to the effort. Skip King, Suds Monkey’s general manager, got a neighboring business to donate a U-Haul for transport.
“Skip came over here and loaded up the pallets, took it to San Marcos and then it was broken down and loaded on the plane to go into Kerrville on day two,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy said they wanted to make sure that critical supplies got to the location as fast as possible.
“The shovels were all the way up to the cockpit,” Jimmy said. “The seats were dismantled and stuff was stacked all the way to the ceilings to make as much as we could of the 1,600 pound weight limit.”
People from the local churches were on the grounds at the Kerrville Municipal Airport to meet Vanessa, and to load supplies onto trailers to go into the different communities.
“We got a lot of the baby formulas and food, medicines and first aid kits on those first flights into Kerrville,” Jimmy said. “It took 30 minutes to load, a 27-minute flight, 30 minutes to unload, and we were back.”
Shortly after that, a nofly- zone was implemented. That, plus the volume of supplies that started coming in, made it more practical to switch to trucking. Walt Graner from the Knights of Columbus loaded up his truck and trailer with 42 pallets of emergency supplies for delivery to affected communities. As donations continued to pour into Treaty Oak, they started making connections with other groups and companies. One of the first was Wimberley Towing.
“We had a rainy day and the forklift got stuck in the mud, so we went online and said, ‘Please, can anybody help us? We cannot do any pallets until our forklift gets out,”’ Angie said. “So Wimberley Towing shows up and pulls our forklift out of the mud.”
Then, Wimberley Towing offered to load up and deliver four pallets — the first ones to leave the facility. The next day, they returned and picked up more. Still, the donations kept coming. A guy from Henderson came with a loaded down horse trailer. Burlebo donated raincoats and weather jackets. Austin Speed Shop donated tubs that would hold up better in the rain. David Tindol donated pallets. Rudy Montes from Grunt Style started driving for deliveries every day.
“Rudy would go drop off, and come back. And we’d load up the trailer and he’d leave it and come back the next day and do it again. He did a lot,” said Kelsey Morris, Treaty Oak administrative assistant.
Angie said the drivers never asked for a single thing.
“They’re using their own gas. They’re using their own time, they’re using their trailers and equipment,” Angie said. “It was really beautiful.”
Meanwhile, Eric Thomas, head distiller at Treaty Oak, stayed busy on the forklift.
“He literally ran a forklift for ten days straight,” Angie. “He palletized everything for us, wrapped it, sent it on all the trucks. We ran him ragged like a dog.”
Another big contributor throughout the process was RogueAmerican, which is local to Hudson Bend and run by CeCe Rodgers.
“Every single day she had a trailer full from the communities in the Lakeway and the Hudson Bend / Apache Shores areas, which was amazing,” Angie said.
And every day, Beto Nava, who owns Nava’s Construction, went to pick up those loads and bring them back to Treaty Oak. He would drop off the donations, then load up with pallets and drive them out to the affected communities. By that time, news of flooding in other areas had spread, and the team decided they needed to branch out in their efforts.
“Marble Falls communities lost everything. They had no power, no sewage, no cell phone towers to even find a local spot to go pick up supplies,” Angie said. “And then from there, it was the Sandy Creek side in Leander. I’m seeing these people’s homes in Sandy Creek just be completely washed away.”
Behind the scenes, the Treaty Oak marketing team was responding to thousands of messages. Every single day they would post on their social media feeds with updated lists of requests.
“As we progressed in receiving donations, the donations started to change to just what was on our lists, which was lovely,” Angie said. “We’re like, we need shovels. Next thing you know, somebody comes and drops off 50 shovels.”
When they asked for chainsaws, Maylee Thomas-Fuller from the Love Life Foundation and the Sanctuary Music and Events Center pulled up.
“She drove down here with a truckload of supplies from McKinney, Texas and a thousand dollars in Home Depot gift cards. Then they came down a second time as well with a load of stuff for Jimmy.”
That included more chainsaws, cots and tents. Jimmy and the Knights of Columbus volunteers were providing updated lists of needs directly from the communities.
“He was letting us know, less of this, more of this, and people were responding,” Angie said.
Then the Amazon packages started rolling in.
“People were shipping from all over the country. People that drink our bourbon were sending us bug spray,” Angie said. “They were sending us N95 masks, everything that we asked for.”
Seanne Krogman, Treaty Oak’s operations assistant, would get those supplies packed and ready to go.
“Seanne’s organizing these pallets out there,” Angie said. “We were building five pallets at a time. Each pallet had a sticky on it that had the location where it was going.”
For part 2 of this story, see the Wednesday, Sept. 3 issue of the San Marcos Daily Record.
