What happens when an entire swath of land the size of multiple New England states encompassing 8-10 million people gets it's annual rainfall total delivered to it in just 3-4 days? Devastation! Plain and simple. The stories of death and destruction, fear, loss and tragedy, but most importantly hope, heroism, humanity, and survival will continue to be shared for decades to come.
Having been born and raised in a small rural community just outside of Houston, most of Rebecca’s family still reside in East Bernard, a small farming town of just 2,000 with a strong Czech heritage. Residents there like to eat BBQ, listen to polka music, and drink cheap light beer. They are good hearted, strong, hard working people who will give you the shirt off their back if you need it. For Rebecca, East Bernard was a great place to grow up and it’s a tight knit community that is still very near and dear to our hearts, including our children whose cousins and childhood friends live there. Needless to say, as the storm approached and the rain began to fall, we began to worry. We checked the news hourly and Facebook every few minutes (this is a big deal for Rebecca because she normally adamantly avoids Facebook).
As the storm made landfall, all we could do was stay in touch with family and listen to their reports as the rain and winds continued to pummel them for days on end. It was a truly helpless feeling. Finally, when Harvey moved east and slowly released its death grip on the Texas coast it became obvious that this unprecedented event was going to require an equally unprecedented response from Texans and the nation. Rebecca knew just how she could use her skills in this time of crisis. Tapping into her years of experience organizing everything from school-wide fundraisers to corporate offsites and being an expert at channeling the efforts, activities, and energy of 100s of people to pull off successful events, she was right in her element in the aftermath of Harvey as so many of our friends, family, and coworkers looked on with horror wondering how they could help. With her knowledge of what the folks were going to need immediately after the water recedes (family and friends have been through this before), the call went out to our network of friends in our Round Rock neighborhood as well as to Clint’s downtown Austin office.
We’ve always known that both Clint’s coworkers at Cloudera and our community of Round Rock were very charitable and caring people, but the outpouring of donations for our upcoming visit to Rebecca’s home town and surrounding area was overwhelming to say the least. We knew almost immediately that we were going to need a trailer to haul all of these items.
Equipped with our trailer full of flood relief supplies, including $100s in gift cards to help Harvey's victims, we set off for the unknown to see just how bad it all was. When we arrived in East Bernard, we hit the City Hall first, where they were collecting donations for locals in need. Rebecca had itemized and categorized our donations and things we purchased with donated funds, so we had the shelter necessities at the back of the trailer and unloaded all of that first. All of the remaining items were already boxed up in large plastic tubs so that we could hand a single tub to a family and it would contain all the necessities including a thoughtful note and gift card, so our next mission was to drive around the county roads and find the worst hit. Here are some of the folks we visited, they were all very grateful and hugs were shared. Most people were just sweating away in the heat and mosquitos to clear their homes out, no time to stop and think about the magnitude of all this.
Speaking of mosquitos, OMG we have never in our lives seen larger, more aggressive, or more voluminous clouds of ferocious, stop-at-nothing mosquitos as we did this past weekend! They were literally feasting on our flesh like swarms of flying piranhas! And no amount of bug spray would stop them. The smell also. It's so hard to describe the smell that permeated the countryside everywhere you went. Mildew was definitely the dominant smell, but there were wafts of cow manure and overflowing septic tank too (not to mention the dead livestock and animals we saw). Every breath was like taking an e-cigarette vape of cow patty because the dank humid air was like a moldy soup.
We want to thank each and every one of you who gave generously to our trip. There are so many charities and directions you could have sent your hard earned money, but we can assure you that the lives of many were touched by your generosity. You know who you are. This was only possible because of you.
On a lighter note, here are a few things we don't normally hear on a family visit :)
"I had minnows swimming in my A/C unit."
"My neighbor had a catfish in their pool."
"I've heard of pigs flying, but never cows swimming."
Scenes from our family and friends houses and the surrounding area from this past weekend, and oh yeah, we put our kids to work:
A special thanks goes out to each and every one of you who donated to this cause. We can't thank you enough. We also want to give a special shout out to Jason's Deli and our friend Jamie Cohen who gave so much water for our trip after all the other generous things your amazing company had already done. Thank you Jamie, Jason's Deli, and all of our dear friends.
