Okay, spent today volunteering in Leander at sandy creek.
Its a mess. There's plenty of volunteers and almost too many supplies.
I wouldn't recommend just showing up. I had a contact. Go through adrn or something similar.
The main volunteering effort is not being run through state resources. Its civilian led, best i can tell. The search for remaining victims is being done by state resources or random groups of lay people who i don't think are supposed to be doing so. I don't know how much the state or Travis county is involved in caring for the residents. Govt officials are on the ground for recover efforts and engineering.
There is some mucking happening...but, most houses that are left aren't worth it. From what I saw, if the water hit the house, the house went away.
As someone who is trained in response, it was hard to grasp what was going on, how supplies were being distributed, or how volunteers were being placed. I saw some cleanup crews and there was one section that had a dozen or so skid steers clearing debris. Sounds nice except they are still looking for fatalities.
I have a feeling there'd be a good case study to be had on what happens when there's a slow or delayed response by civil authorities and the void is filled by lay people.
All that said, the response by the civilians is great and they are working theor asses off. The only way to get supplies to one section is to physically walk it across the bridge.
If you do show up, sign up via the phone number first. They'll place you somewhere. Or, theres some "non official" routes one could take and go directly to some of the people doing cleaning.
