Kerr County residents are cleaning out homes and businesses this month after the second devastating flood in as many years — but this time, some nonprofits and community leaders say they’re facing more destruction with less financial assistance and volunteer help than last year.
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As of Tuesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency hadn’t approved federal aid for individuals or local governments — including Kerr County, which, according to the Kerrville Daily Times, was already facing a potential $8 million budget shortfall.
The state by Monday had received 1,501 damage survey submissions, including 47 destroyed structures and 310 that suffered major damage, according to Shorey Harmon, Kerr County’s new emergency management coordinator. In addition to the flood damage, the area expects to suffer economic losses as tourists cancel trips during the busy summer season.
“This is a new flood,” said Jeff Byard, chief program officer for the veteran-led Team Rubicon, which brought volunteers to muck out homes. “This isn’t last year’s flood. People need help, and organizations need the support of partners and individuals.”
County leaders and locals say the public response hasn’t come close to last year’s flood, which grabbed global media attention after 119 died in Kerr County, including 27 girls swept away by the Guadalupe River at Camp Mystic. Robert Earl Keen, Miranda Lambert and other stars hosted benefit concerts, and resources poured in.
This year, one person died in Kerr County in flooding that affected a much broader region. But the media attention and the fundraising so far hasn’t compared, even though business owners and families have faced buildings filled with mud and debris that needed to be mucked out quickly and rebuilt — in some cases for a second time.
“Where are all the volunteers this year, compared to last?” Kerr County Commissioner Jeff Holt asked as he reviewed post-flood issues at the county commissioners meeting Monday, held in a former municipal court building after the flood swamped the county courthouse basement.
The city of Kerrville estimated it sustained $30 million in infrastructure damage to its water treatment plant, sewage lift stations and roads and bridges, Mayor Joe Herring said. Meanwhile, the county saw roads and bridges damaged and had to relocate staff from the county courthouse, County Judge Rob Kelly said.
School sports teams, locals who suffered through last year’s floods and some volunteer organizations have been serving meals and cleaning out homes. But other philanthropic groups report that donors haven’t given as much as last year.
In 2025, Nathan Rich, a 24-year-old mechanic in Center Point, lived behind his light-duty diesel and vehicle repair business when the July 4 flood hit so quickly that he and his wife only had time to grab their shoes, go-bag and guns. They’d reopened the shop with help from volunteers who showed up the next day and were buying a new house when this year’s flood struck.
The flood ruined Rich’s power tools, office and other machinery again — plus the home appliances he said the Zac Brown Band purchased for them after last year’s flood. Customers’ vehicles were totaled. Mud filled the shop.
Rich and an employee started cleaning out metal drawers filled with hand tools. They felt beaten down, he said.
Then three volunteers arrived on Saturday to help, and their mood immediately lifted. They got enough done to reopen Monday.
“That made a huge difference,” Rich said. “ It’s not even necessarily about the money. It’s about just showing that there’s people that care.”
Some 250 small businesses asked for help within three days of the flood from LiftFund, which provided up to $10,000 in grants to help small businesses rebuild, including Rich’s, President and CEO Amy Hereford said. They had to close the applications because they had more than they could fund.
“They are hardworking, and they are humble human beings,” Hereford said. “And they are tired, exhausted.”
“They are helping each other — that’s always a given that we see over there,” she added. “They will go to the ends of the earth for each other, but they really need help right now.”
“We haven’t received any kind of help”
Liz Ayala, a 42-year-old clinical research coordinator in Austin, rushed to Monterey Street in Kerrville on July 16 to find a block of people who didn’t know what to do after their homes flooded. Intense, heavy rain hit near the city that morning and creeks draining into the Guadalupe River overflowed, including Town Creek, which pushed several feet of water into Ayala’s family home and forced her family to evacuate.
Ayala’s grandmother raised Ayala’s mom in the house, and still lived there when Ayala was growing up. Ayala would walk over as a girl, ring a metal bell to signal her arrival and eat her grandma’s famous tortillas with butter. After her grandma died two years ago, her parents and brother moved into the house, joining one of her aunts.
Her grandma was the kind of person who looked out for her community; she used to leave tacos for the mailman. Now Ayala found herself trying to support her neighbors, many of them seniors, by telling them which damage forms to complete online and sharing flyers about charity resources.
Meanwhile, she and her family bought tools and ripped out soggy sheetrock and flooring with the help of friends and relatives. With the house completely gutted, they looked for places to stay until it could be made livable again.
They hauled debris, paying for each load. Her mom developed a cough, likely from the moldy, rotten air around the house.
On July 22, Ayala addressed the Kerrville City Council, seeking help for her family and her neighborhood: “We haven’t received any kind of help, just us as neighbors just doing it ourselves and friends that have trucks or anything just coming to help us.”
The next day, a volunteer group from Samaritan’s Purse provided needed relief, finishing the gutting and cleaning and allowing the family to rest. Ayala said they’re still not sure if they’ll get any financial help to rebuild.
“I don’t know what comes next,” she said.
Mayor Herring visited Ayala’s family home, as she’d asked at the council meeting.
“There’s a lot more help needed, she’s right,” Herring said. “Where do they live while they’re waiting for their homes to be restored? What’s the next step?”
The only FEMA help so far was for emergency measures, which could include search and rescue and shelters. It’s unclear whether the agency will do more, and officials were encouraging residents to report their damage to the state to help build their case.
U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas wrote to President Donald Trump last week asking him to approve more support, saying the still-recovering communities carried “an extraordinary burden.”
Kerr County Commissioner Tom Jones quoted Psalms 34: “The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’”
“That’s kind of where we’re at right now, right?,” Jones said. “We are kind of crushed in spirit, but this is the most resilient place I’ve ever been a part of.”
At Audio Video Solutions in Kerrville, Town Creek pushed through with such force that it lifted the building up — leaving a slanted flood line — and swamped a slew of other nearby businesses, including the iconic hardware store Gibson’s and a Mexican restaurant down the road.
Kevin Grona, the 57-year-old Audio Video Solutions owner, said he lost TVs, projectors and other equipment and expects he’s going to have to knock the whole building down — a significant financial hit. He saved what he could, like ceiling lights and the electrical panel.
Now he’s trying to run the business from home and sending shipments to someone else’s building.
“I can’t just stop,” Grona said. “So if I can go out and make some money every day, I’m going to try to make it.”
Stretched resources
In some ways, Kerr County was already ahead in its ability to respond to another flood. It already had a long-term group helping to think through how to help the community recover economically, ecologically and spiritually. Earlier this year, they opened a space in Kerrville to concentrate resources for people to get help after last year’s flood.
But they were still very much in the process of rebuilding from the 2025 flood when the 2026 flood hit, said Todd Bock, executive director of the Kerr Economic Development Corporation.
“What we have seen so far in preliminary data has given us enough concern to know that we don’t have enough resources where we are today,” Bock said.
The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country launched a relief fund the day of the flooding in Kerr County this year, like it did last year. It had distributed $82 million of the more than $150 million it raised after the 2025 flood, as of June.
The foundation hasn’t yet provided an update on its fundraising after this latest disaster or whether some of that funding can be repurposed, but said in a statement Monday that it expected to focus on providing emergency financial assistance for homes and small businesses and offer more information soon.
“This situation naturally increases anxiety, stress, and existential fear about what comes next, and that is a tough burden for anyone to carry,” CEO Austin Dickson said when this year’s flood hit Kerr County, drenching carpets in his own home. “On the other hand, we have been through this as a community before.”
When the storm hit, Mercy Chefs was getting ready to move out of a leased kitchen after providing hot meals there for a year — longer than is typical. But they extended their lease a bit and were back to providing emergency meals again.
“We will go into our cash reserves when we have to,” said CEO and Founder Gary LeBlanc. “Our support is based on the need in the community, not visibility or media coverage or donor support.”
Samaritan’s Purse and its volunteers had helped clean up homes, getting through 16 work orders in the Kerrville area as of Saturday with 161 requests to go; in at least one case they were helping someone they’d helped the year before.
Last year, Good360, which raises money and gives away donated products such as cleaning supplies, clothes and construction materials, gave $4.3 million worth of goods to the Hill Country from some 30 companies that included Mattress Firm, Ikea and JC Penney.
As of last week, Good360 had received no corporate support to respond to this round of Texas flooding, said Morgan Loomis, vice president of disaster response and recovery — which she attributed in part to donor fatigue and a lack of national media attention.
“Nobody’s really seeing the donations come in like they did previously, both in cash and in product,” Loomis said. “The resources are not coming in, but there is the level of expectation from the community based off of the support that was provided last time.”
In the unincorporated neighborhood of Bumble Bee Hills 46-year-old Justin Rumbo and his wife had rebuilt their home after the 2025 flood exactly as they wanted, with donated help. He even got to put a hot tub on the porch. This year, it flooded again with several feet of water.
His sister scrawled “HELP” on a damaged mattress in the front yard a day or two after the flood; his daughter started a GoFundMe.
Along with a friend and a few volunteers, Rumbo gutted the home for a second time. A few local sports teams stopped by to help move furniture and possessions out.
“They know that we can’t do it alone,” he said.
