FLOOD RELIEF
Treaty Oak serves as community hub for flood relief
Editor’s note: This is the final article in a 2-part series.
When it came to community response after the Fourth of July floods, there was no shortage of volunteers. Treaty Oaks Distillery in Dripping Springs had no problems finding people to help out.
“The phone started ringing, nonstop. People want- ing to come help, people wanting to donate, people wanting to just come pick stu. up," Kelsey said. "We had posts on social media asking for volunteers. And people were just showing up." A lot of volunteers came back for multiple days, including Sharon Burke, owner of Poodie's Hilltop Roadhouse, and her manager, Sherry Pye. ey brought seven chainsaws, oil, .les and everything, and spent a week volunteering with donations. e next week, Sherry went out to cook with Angie. "Sharon was running the bar and they were donating their tips and their proceeds from the bar," Angie said. A family from Kansas, who were in Texas for an FFA event, also reached out. "He called and said, 'I'm coming with an empty trailer, what do you guys need?'" Kelsey said. "No one had donated chainsaw gas, so that was the only thing I told him, and he showed up and donated it." One day, the Lake Travis football team volunteered. "e football team showed up one day to help us and just boxed, packed, organized and moved everything everywhere we needed it to go, which was amazing," Angie said. Treaty Oak also received donations from former campers and camp counselors from the Kerrville area, including a group from Heart O' the Hills who gave $1200 in Home Depot gift cards, plus chainsaws and lights. And the Puryear family got sponsorship from ReMax and purchased supplies to donate. "ey went and bought like $4,300 worth of what was on our list, .lled up an entire truck and a trailer full and brought it," Lindsey said. Yet another day, a group of 20 from Whole Foods came to help. "By the time the Whole Foods crew left, we were so much more organized," Angie said. "And every single day we got better. We were in a rhythm and a swing; everybody had their jobs, and they had their things that they were working on. And we all just worked together." In total, the Treaty Oak team sent out around 200 pallets of donations to affected areas, including Kerrville, Center Point, Ingram, Comfort, Hunt, San Angelo, San Saba, Burnett, Marble Falls, Johnson City, Llano, Leander and Lago Vista, even a few small loads to Seguin, Georgetown and New Braunfels. After the .rst week, the group started switching gears. Seanne and Lindsey continued working with the donations, and Angie and Leah retreated to the kitchen to start cooking meals for people. "I connected with Amanda Webb, who's our representative from Benny Keith. Next thing you know, we have a truckload of stu.," Angie said. "ey had donated over 100 cases of food, packaging supplies, packaged silverware, the bags to put the meals in, everything." Miller's Smokehouse out in Llano donated 30 cases of sausage. Mr. Greens Produce donated onions, garlic and other fresh vegetables. ey also received rice, beans, chicken and beef and pork. "Hat.eld donated four cases of pork butts that we smoked out on the smoker, which is 200 pounds. We're smoking pork butt in the pouring rain," Angie said. "Whoever's out there, they're just throwing a log in to keep that temperature, and we're all just trucking." Angie decided to focus her cooking e.orts on the community of Sandy Creek. "We cooked up one day with just a tent and a couple of coolers, and we cooked on the side of the road right o. of Big Sandy because the bridge was broken down," Angie said. "ey were running these meals by foot across in the bags to these folks that didn't have any food." Angie was providing meals not just to residents but also to the people in the area who were helping with recovery e.orts. "ey're all huddled under our tents because there's no shelter from the sun. ey're sitting there on the ground, on coolers, Indian-style on the back of our truck beds," Angie said. "Everybody's been working together side-byside, meeting each other from all over the place, and now we're sharing a meal together." Angie and her team started out making sausage wraps, and then switched to making more complex dishes, like Cajun pasta or green chili chicken enchiladas and Mexican rice. "ese people just lost their homes. ey lost all their belongings," Angie said. "e last thing I'm gonna go out there and o.er them is a peanut butter sandwich." Every single day, they also went out with some form of dessert, from homemade cookies to an ambrosia salad. Over four days in Sandy Creek, they served 2,000 meals. Another day, they sent a couple hundred meals to Marble Falls for workers. "It was big food, big love, big hearts out there, you know," Angie said. While there were a lot of uplifting stories about people who were helping, there were also less savory happenings. Some people whose homes had .ooded didn't want to leave because of looting. "It was disgusting," Angie said. "People were just going on their land, picking through their belongings and taking what they wanted. Stealing generators o. the backs of people's porches that have nothing." Even big equipment wasn't exempt. ieves stole a forklift, an excavator, a skid steer. "People couldn't leave their equipment out there, knowing they were done at 8 o'clock at night, coming back at 5 in the morning," Angie said. "eir stu. would be gone in the middle of the night." Treaty Oak had generators stolen from their setup in Sandy Creek, where they were preparing meals. "It's the unfortunate side of the natural disaster," Lindsey said. While recovery is ongo-ing in all of the communities, e.orts are now moving out of crisis mode. "ey've already made that transition to clearing these houses that are liveable," Jimmy said. "People are starting to go back now, and shifting gears to get sheetrock, insulation torn out. Construction is going to be the second phase." Once people are home, they will need furniture, mattresses and other home goods. Jimmy said the Knights of Columbus will continue to assist in whatever ways they can. "Knights of Columbus is boots on the ground every day. A lot of people don't know that, but we run on the pulse of listening to what's needed out there from whomever," Jimmy said. "We put people all up and down the river. We know their backgrounds and their specialties, whether they're an electrician, plumber, framer." He said there are a lot of people like that, who are ready to do whatever it takes, from helping families to continuing to clean up the riverbanks. "I mean, it's like 40 miles of debris," Jimmy said. "e frames of these mobile homes were 40 feet up in the trees, wrapped, looked like they were tin cans," Jimmy said. "Guardrails were peeled o., they looked like banana peels, just shreds." Vehicles were buried under the shifting rocks and sand, or demolished by the power of the water and the materials it carried with it. "ey looked like somebody just shot them full of holes," Jimmy said. "It just didn't look like a car anymore. It was just ruin." Treaty Oak said it is shifting gears as well and looking to keep supporting families as they recover. "Now that their properties are drying out and they have structures, they need furniture. ey need drywall. ey need all those things that we can't just hand them," Lindsey said. ey've started a Hill Country Strong program, which is matching donations through bottle purchases and other e.orts. "at's kind of our goal, is to get people what they need long after. Because here's the deal - three months from now, these people are still gonna need help," Angie said. "is is not gonna be an easy rebuild at all." Jimmy said that most efforts to date have only been enough to help people through the day. "It's not even beginning to do the patch up of what's been taken away," Jimmy said. Angie said she was tremendously proud of the people in Dripping Springs and the surrounding communities for everything they have done and given so far. "is is not an inexpensive movement," Angie said. "To see how much they give back, knowing that this is not a very fruitful time for a lot of people, it was really beautiful. And I was very proud to be a part of it."
