As Central Texas continues to reel from the devastating loss of the July Fourth floods, there's been an outpouring of support from the community.
Those at the helm of the Kerrville Folk Festival are on the ground organizing donations. As one of the premier music destinations known the world over, staff members have been fielding calls from concerned festival-goers across the country, asking for ways they can help.
Deb Rouse, the executive director of the Kerrville Folk Festival Foundation, spoke with Texas Standard about how the festival grounds are opening their doors for those who have been displaced, staging physical donations for when they are needed in later months and taking monetary donations for disaster relief.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: How are you folks doing there at the Folk Festival? I understand you've been getting calls from all over.
Deb Rouse: We have. Our grounds themselves are seven miles south of the Guadalupe, so we were well out of harm's way from the river flooding. We're a little bit used to dealing with a lot of rain because we've been on this site for 50 years and understand a lot about the drainage.
What I've been fielding over the past two days are loyal festival attendees – in some cases someone who's only been to our festival one time – from all across the country calling me and messaging me saying, what can we do to help? What can we do to help those in the Kerrville community that are impacted by this?
Well, some of the pictures of the devastation are – it's impossible to take it all in. I can't imagine what you're seeing there. When folks ask what can we do to help, what are you telling them?
Three things. The first one is we have opened up the ranch to displaced people who might need a place to go. Most of those people right now are in shelters. Those shelters are going to start closing soon, and those people are going to be left with the stark realization that they are homeless and have nowhere to go.
We are opening the ranch. We have some limited capacity to house totally unhoused people. People who have RVs that have been displaced from those RV parks, we have approximately 100 RV sites that we are willing to make available to help with that process.
» MORE: Guadalupe River Flood: How to help, and how to find help
The second thing we're doing is because we've had so many people reach out and want to donate, want to give in a responsible way. We are using the ranch to stage physical donations.
Right now, the city of Kerrville has said we have all the water and other supplies that we need and that'll be great, but in a couple of weeks, in a couple of months, we all know those supplies are going to dry up. So we are staging for our community members who want to donate physical goods to be used for this, trusting us to make sure that they are used in a thoughtful responsible way.
We are also taking monetary donations. You can either write us a check and send it to me and say "flood relief" or you can donate through our website – just mark it as flood relief.
And we will use that to help members of the community on an as-needed basis with the understanding that anything we don't use for that purpose we will donate to a relief organization.
How do you think this event from Independence Day weekend has affected your community long-term? I can't help but look back over the years; they call it Flash Flood Alley for a reason.
Do you see this as leading to some kind of more permanent change, or do you see rebuilding, recovery, and Kerrville as it always was?
I do think the community will rebuild. I think we're very committed to that.
Do I think for the first time in probably since '87, there will be serious discussions about biting the bullet and spending the money, raising the tax rate to put in a warning system? You know, it's been talked about for a number of years. The price tag is always very hefty. But I am hopeful that there will be long-term change.
I do expect that the community will rebuild. It's such a beautiful part of Texas, and it's got so much rich history and culture and nature.
I mean, we have forests and we have deer and we have lovely rivers and streams and creeks that all create this really gorgeous scenery, and it's a great recreational area. And I don't think that's going to stop because of the flooding.
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