Citywest Church sits between the towns of Kerrville and Ingram. In the days since devastating flash floods tore through the region, this house of worship has been transformed into a pop-up food distribution site, organized by Virginia-based nonprofit, Mercy Chefs.
In a large room with high ceilings and beige walls, volunteers in matching blue shirts line each side of a long row of folding tables. They sing along to classics like Brooks & Dunn's "Boot Scootin' Boogie" and "Beat It" by Michael Jackson, their voices rising cheerfully into the air as they scoop generous servings of chicken pot pie into takeout containers. Those meals are then packed into large moving boxes, along with drinks and other snacks, ready to be dispatched across the community.
"Everybody here in Kerr County lost someone or knows someone that lost someone," Mercy Chefs CEO Gary LeBlanc tells All Things Considered host Juana Summers. "So for those 70 or 100 volunteers that are with us every day, it's therapy for them. They want to get out and do something."
LeBlanc says they are providing as many as 5,000 hot meals to the community each day.
"Neighbors helping neighbors is always the best way to recovery."
But in order for neighbors to actually help their neighbors, a lot of organizing has to happen first. In one room, a white board displays a big list of places that need food – and people to contact. Tim Thomason stands in front of it with a phone that seems to ring constantly.
"We're trying to feed the county," he says. "Normally, it would be feeding a community or, you know, a few houses. But this is such a tragedy."
Thomason is from Ingram and leads a group called Blind Faith Foundation. He says this has been a devastating week. But there have been rewarding moments, too, such as the day he got a call about 200 girls stuck at a camp upriver. He and his team loaded up meals to bring to them.
"As soon as we pulled up on this camp of 200 little girls, they come running out, crying and high-fiving and hugging us because they hadn't had a meal in two days," he recalls. "To know that we had the ability to go do that and to make a difference in those lives and give them a hot meal, there's just no words."
More than 100 people were killed in the flash floods that tore through the region when the Guadalupe River reached its second highest height on record, and the death toll continues to climb. More than 160 people are still missing. The damage has been extensive, which has made some areas difficult to reach.
It's a challenge that Tate DeMasco, the athletic director and head football coach at Ingram Tom Moore High School, is ready and willing to take on. DeMasco, a broad man with a salt-and-pepper goatee, is preparing to head out from the church. He and other volunteers hoist cardboard boxes full of hot meals and a cooler with cold drinks into the back of a white pickup truck, the school's logo on the side.
He tells NPR he was awoken around 4:45 a.m. Friday morning, when a fellow coach called him to warn him of the flooding. DeMasco says he immediately headed to the fire department to find out if there was anything he could do. And he's called on other local coaches to help too.
"I haven't had anybody say no. It's 'where do you want me at?' 'How can I help?'" At first, that meant directing traffic "because it was a madhouse." Then, DeMasco linked up with Citywest Church and Mercy Chefs to bring food to the community.
On this particular occasion, he's headed a few miles away to a hard-hit neighborhood. He points out the destruction along a state highway that runs parallel to the Guadalupe River as he drives: the Little League complex, which just finished hosting an all-star tournament, now gone; the banks that used to be lined with cypress trees, reduced to debris.
"Imagine being a 15, 16, 17 year old kid that's grown up here in this beautiful place, and this is what it looks like right now."
When DeMasco drives through a large stone and metal arch reading "Bumblebee," the damage to the subdivision is immediately clear. Water-logged furniture is piled up at the curb outside of some houses. Others have big dumpsters, full of ruined belongings. A man power-washes grime away from one house's exterior, which belongs to Martha and Miles Murayama.
From the outside, it looks relatively untouched. But the inside is a different story, Martha says.
"Everything inside is gone because we had one foot bass. We had fish, leeches, everything inside the house. Everything."
They were able to keep their mattresses and some solid-wood furniture. Everything else is in dumpsters. Still, the Murayamas consider themselves lucky. They were at home, sleeping, when the flood began. Miles was swept away by the water outside their house, but he survived.
Their daughter Ashley Espinoza was already at the house to start the arduous process of cleaning up and rebuilding.
"She's dealing with it the best she can," Espinoza says of her mom. "She's holding it together the best that she can. And I mean, that's all she can do. These were the cards that she was dealt, and she's — she's managing."
In the aftermath of a disaster like this, where the need is so vast, managing is about all one can do. Tim Thomason who's been helping organize volunteer efforts says, in moments like these, Texans look to one another.
"We keep focus. We encourage each other. We love each other here," he says. "I have never been hugged by so many sweaty men in my life."
DeMasco leaves the neighborhood and heads back to Citywest Church to pick up Chris Russ, another local coach, for another meal drop in another struggling community. Russ grew up in Kerrville and coaches football and baseball at the city's Tivy High School. He and his family were on vacation when they heard about the flood – and that another Tivy High School coach, Reece Zunker, and his family were missing. Russ immediately returned home. School officials have since confirmed the deaths of Zunker and his wife, Paula, though their two children are still missing.
"Coming and doing this kind of keeps me busy and not thinking about some other things," Russ says.
He has known Dick and Tweety Eastland, the longtime owners of Camp Mystic, since he was a kid. Dick Eastland was killed in the flooding, along with scores of young campers and counselors who were swept away. One of Eastland's grandsons plays for Russ' football team, so Russ says he saw many of his players when he visited the camp earlier in the day.
"We have quite a few guys over there helping to clean out houses, clean out cabins, so they're staying busy," he says. "We'll push on. And I think kids are resilient and they'll get through it. And so, yeah, I mean, they're helping when they can and then also trying to get back to some normalcy."
It may take a while to reach any semblance of normalcy in Kerrville. But for the time being, Chris Russ, Tate DeMasco and a fleet of local coaches and volunteers are making sure people in their communities can, at the very least, have a hot plate of food and a cold drink.
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