KERRVILLE, Texas – While on summer break from Sam Houston State University, Nathan Kleinhenz said he felt helpless watching the coverage of the Hill Country floods over the last week.
On Friday, he traveled from his home in Missouri City, a Houston suburb, to Kerrville to see if he could lend a hand.
“I was driving, and I saw all the devastation. And I was like, ‘Seems like a good spot,’” said Kleinhenz, who is pursuing a degree in criminal justice and wants to one day work as a police officer.
Kleinhenz works as a camp counselor and said the tragedy that unfolded July 4 at Camp Mystic, in nearby Hunt, compelled him to grab a few tools, drive to the Hill Country and criss cross land he had never set foot on before Friday.
“Seeing all the kids from the camp, all the devastation, all the loss,” Kleinhanz said. “Just made me feel so bad because I know how much the kids at my camp mean to me.”
Musician Noaa Rienecker was part of a group of searchers he said had been turned away earlier Friday from a nearby park where a formal search and rescue team was already on sight.
“Just kind of freelancing. So, we’re looking for places where there’s huge brush piles and doesn’t seem to be a lot of emergency services people,” said Rienecker.
Texas Game Wardens have been using orange spray paint to mark areas in places like Hunt and Ingram that have been searched.
Those markings were not present along this stretch of the Guadalupe River in Kerrville near G Street.
Landscape that a little more than a week ago was grass banks and large trees has been replaced by splintered, uprooted trees and large patches of sand.
Greg Vanlandingham, a Boerne resident whose deputy sheriff father responded to the 1987 floods in Comfort, walked the banks Friday in Kerrville after spending time earlier this week in Hunt.
“You hope. You always hope for the best,” Vanlandingham said. “Give the family closure.”
Before a possible influx of volunteers this weekend, the City of Kerrville and the Texas Department of Emergency Management are providing a way for “spontaneous volunteers” to help out in flood recovery efforts.
The city said volunteers can register and check-in beginning at 8 a.m. on Saturday at Tivy Antler Stadium (1310 Sydney Baker Street, Kerrville, Texas, 78028).
Before arrival, city officials said all volunteers must register with Texas Community Recovery at this website.
After arriving at the stadium, volunteers will be “asked to sign waivers and attend a short safety briefing before beginning any assignments,” the city stated in a news release.
More recent coverage of the Hill Country Floods on KSAT: