Running atop the southern tip of Big Sandy Creek, there’s a small bridge enveloped by debris, uprooted trees, and swaths of sheet metal. Underneath, detached car seats float in the still rapidly rushing water. A mother and daughter tread carefully on horseback – as what’s left of the road is now blocked off from vehicles – winding through the only patch of concrete left unscathed. In otherwise complete and eerie silence, they say that they’re headed down the street to grab food.
Just a few-minute walk from Big Sandy Creek in West Travis County, only 25 minutes from Central Austin, Pastor Michael Herms is operating a makeshift aid distribution site at Round Mountain Baptist Church. Tables line the converted nave with food, clothes, water, medicine, and more. Volunteers from the surrounding area, including H-E-B and Central Texas Food Bank workers, fill each room with first aid and hygiene kits. The church is no longer looking for food donations but is instead asking for ATVs, wood chippers, and chain saws.
Herms is tired after 12 straight hours of work and overwhelmed by both devastation and gratitude. “We are swamped by the response,” Herms told the Chronicle. “I never thought I’d have to turn volunteers away. We’ll be distributing as long as the community needs it, and if they don’t need food anymore, we will shift.”
After six months working at Round Mountain Baptist Church, Herms never imagined his first few months on the job would look like this: canceled church services replaced by days-long mutual aid distribution running from early morning into late night.
Some volunteers in the neighborhood, including convoys from North Carolina, mentioned that community members are left conducting search-and-rescues on their own.
On Monday afternoon, over the San Gabriel River and down the street from Southwestern University, Austin Mutual Aid organizers set up camp outside St. Paul United Methodist Church. Volunteers paid out of pocket to secure hotel rooms for individuals mostly unhoused or living in Georgetown RV parks near the river. With a group of about 10 volunteers from Austin Mutual Aid, Hands Off Central Texas, and the Georgetown mobile food pantry Helping Hands, locals secured 17 hotel rooms through Saturday.
“We used everything we learned from the Uri storms,” Ro Sigler, an organizer with AMA, said. “Never have I seen anything like this before. I’ve also never seen this volume of people activated in mutual aid – it is truly something else. Mutual aid is something people are rapidly learning, and it has to become part of our everyday lives now. We cannot depend on the government for assistance.”
Austin Mutual Aid aims to negotiate more hotel rooms for residents of Sandy Creek and Bear Creek and send supplies out to San Angelo neighborhoods by Monday night. Megan Thuy, a volunteer with AMA, posted on Instagram Tuesday morning calling for volunteers in a search-and-rescue campaign in Leander’s Sandy Creek.
Sandy Creek is one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the Austin-adjacent area, as 10 people remain missing, KXAN reports. The death toll in Travis and Williamson counties has risen to 14.
Helping lead the recovery efforts in Travis and Williamson counties is Austin Pets Alive! APA helped clear out Kerrville Pets Alive! on Friday, to make room for pets found during the search-and-rescue. Now, they’re leading their own entirely volunteer-run effort in the Austin area for lost animals.
Over 100 animals have been rescued from Kerrville and Austin shelters, and an ongoing database of lost pet notices seeks to reunite found animals in the county with their families.
“After you lose everything, if your pet is still there, that is gold,” Ellen Jefferson, president and CEO of Austin Pets Alive!, told the Chronicle. “It has been extremely emotional and devastating. We have become a first responder by default. We are in the middle of a disaster zone, there is no direction and it is mass chaos.”
Find out more about local fundraisers, donation requests, and other big and small ways you can help.
This article appears in July 11 • 2025.