After the Flood

Dominic Anthony Walsh: Previously on After the Flood.

Joe Herrera: I looked at my rain gauge. It’s 10 and a half inches in, that’s 45 minutes. That’s a lot of rain. Something’s going on here.

Matthew Childress: It is not linear. Um, the grief, the anger, the acceptance, all those pieces you bounce around constantly.

Casey Garrett: They express to us that they know nobody’s coming.

Nobody’s coming for us. We know that that’s done.

Miles Muryama: Why? Why? Why? Why 4th of July, wee hours in the morning? Why couldn’t it be 4th of July during daylight where people would have had a chance maybe?

Dominic Anthony Walsh: I’m Dominic Anthony Walsh, the host of After the Flood. The episode you’re about to hear references death, trauma, and finding human remains, so please take care while listening. On July 31st, 2025, residents from across Central Texas had gathered at an event center in Kerrville. They were there to tell state lawmakers and the public about the flood they’d survived just a few weeks earlier.

One of those people was Ashlee Willis.

Ashlee Willis: My name is Ashlee Willis. I am also a Sandy Creek resident, at least I used to be. I’ll live there again.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: You can tell watching the footage that Ashlee was tired but determined. She wanted to use the three minutes that she’d been given to relay as much of her experience as possible, including how destructive and deadly the flood had been and how gruesome the aftermath.

One thing she said was particularly startling.

Ashlee Willis: I found a hip and a leg on my property, and we did that, volunteers in the community

Dominic Anthony Walsh: Ashlee and her family lost everything that July 4th weekend. But they don’t live in Kerr County. They live about 100 miles northeast in a small unincorporated community outside Austin called Sandy Creek. In the early morning hours of July 5th, floodwaters swept through Sandy Creek. Nine people died, and more than 100 homes were damaged or destroyed, including Ashlee’s.

Kerr County and Sandy Creek are similar in that they share the natural beauty that you find in the Hill Country, but there are some big differences. Sandy Creek is not a vacation destination. There aren’t any summer camps. What happened in Sandy Creek did not get national attention. Right after the storm, Ashlee and some of her neighbors did not get the help they expected, and in the months that have followed, they’ve discovered what many disaster victims confront, just how complicated the recovery process can be.

I first heard about Ashlee from my colleague, Kaylie Hunt. Kaylie’s a reporter at KUT, the NPR station in Austin, and we’d both covered the floods. In November, we checked in with survivors about their plans for Thanksgiving. I went back to Kerr County to visit Miles Maruyama, Ramiro Rodriguez, and Lilia and Joe Herrera.

You heard them in episode one. They were the neighbors in Bumblebee Hills who helped each other survive the flood on July 4th.

Miles Muryama: Hey, how’s it going? All right, come on in.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: It was four months after the flood, and Miles’ house had already been repaired, so much so that you couldn’t tell it had been damaged. He planned on hosting dinner.

Miles Murayama: I can’t wait for Thanksgiving so we can invite the family over, you know? We can have a gathering. You know, this is a gathering place.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: Lilia and Joe Herrera were gonna have people over for Thanksgiving, too, even though they were still rebuilding.

Lilia Herrera: I might not have everything, but we will make do with what I have.

That’s what we’re gonna do, right, Joe? Have the best, we’re gonna have the best ever. Yep, yep.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: Ramiro, the man who’d saved Joe and Lilia from the floodwaters, was planning on volunteering on Thanksgiving, and then heading to their home afterwards to celebrate the holiday. Kaylie, meanwhile, had reached out to Ashlee and her family.

Their situation was very different from the folks in Bumblebee Hills.

Ashlee Willis: We are currently in campers back on the farm, trying our best to rebuild. We are using, actually, the slab foundation that used to be our brewery building as our community patio. We’ve made it kinda cute. There are pink flamingos.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: Ashlee and her family were planning to go to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving.

Ashlee Willis: And they’re gonna provide the space, and we’re gonna do our best to pretend that this isn’t our life for a day.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: By May 2026, six months after that Thanksgiving, and nearly a year after the flood, Kaylie told me that Ashlee and her family were still living in trailers. So I decided to go to Austin to meet them.

Kaylie and I met at the KUT offices on the University of Texas campus, and started driving northwest. About 40 minutes later, we entered a suburb of Austin called Leander.

Kailey Hunt: Right up here This is actually where I went to high school.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: Kaylee grew up in Leander. During her lifetime, she’d seen it grow from a town of about 8,000 people to a small city of about 80,000.

Driving through Leander, we saw signs of that growth, lots of new apartments, a new Home Depot, and an H-E-B. But once we were past the city limits, we had definitely entered the Hill Country.

You got the roadside wildflowers. Um, you know, the trees are green, and

then through the cracks in the trees, you can kind of see for miles, uh, the rolling hills.

This part of Travis County looks a lot like Kerr County, even though it’s about 100 miles away. The area is unincorporated, which means it’s not part of any town or city. The people who live there rely on Travis County for things like governance, infrastructure, and public safety. We turned onto a small winding road and took it all the way to the end, driving over a gravel low water crossing.

A sign that said Asher Acres came into view. We had made it to Ashlee Willis’ home

Ashlee Willis: Hello, hello. How are you guys doing? Good.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: Ashlee and her family had been living on this same piece of land for nearly 40 years. She took us to the concrete slab with the pink flamingos that she mentioned earlier in the episode.

She and her family call it their living room. There was an outdoor sofa, some chairs, and a table underneath a metal carport, which they had decorated with colorful lights. They also had an outdoor dining table and green turf laid out next to the carport. Three campers surrounded the space: one for Ashlee, one for her mom and dad, Brandy and Greg, and one for her aunt, Donna.

Ashlee went to get her mom, Brandy.

Ashlee Willis: I’m gonna go grab mom real

Dominic Anthony Walsh: quick. Make yourselves at home. They’ve done their best to make it feel like home, but Ashlee and Brandy told us it looked nothing like it did before the flood, when they lived in multiple modest homes and ran a small family farm.

Brandy Gerstner: I mean,

Ashlee Willis: my house was

Brandy Gerstner: across the driveway there.

She had a three-bedroom, two-bath house there. My husband and I had a three-bedroom, two-bath house there, and my sister had her single wide mobile home across the creek. We had the pump house. We had- Two barns … two barns, a huge chicken coop. The bees. Uh, the bees, the pig pens.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: The only two structures on the property that survived the flood were the greenhouse and the pump house.

Big Sandy Creek runs right through their property. This was the same creek that flooded on July 5th, but the day we visited, it was only a trickle of water. This area is prone to flooding, but Ashlee and Brandy told us that in the nearly 40 years their family has lived there, they’d never had any issues with floodwater reaching their houses.

Next to their makeshift living room was a big expanse of flat earth with a couple patches of green grass that used to be their swimming pool.

Brandy Gerstner: Yeah, we had a beautiful swimming pool with three tiered decks. That

Ashlee Willis: hot tub was

Brandy Gerstner: amazing. And a hot tub and fireplace on it, and it was, it was gorgeous. It was our little piece of Eden, and it was so dense with trees, you just felt like you were in your own, your own space.

There, this was all solid trees.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: Kailey’s been following Ashlee and Brandy’s story for a year –. They thought help would come after the flood. But what actually happened was more complicated

Kaylee picks up the story from here.

Kailey Hunt: The night of July 4th, Ashlee and her friends were partying at her pool. Ashlee had heard about the flooding in Kerr County.

Ashlee Willis: Um, but I didn’t think anything of that ’cause that, like, as far as our safety here, our waterway’s not connected to there. Like-

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee’s right.

Creek isn’t connected to the Guadalupe River that runs through Kerr County. It’s a tributary that flows into Lake Travis, a dammed part of the Colorado River. However, the same weather system that caused the rain in Kerr County also caused the rain in Sandy Creek. It had been raining that July 4th, and Kerr County had just flooded, but Ashlee said she and her friends weren’t worried.

They went to bed around 12:30 the morning of July 5th. Two hours later, Ashlee woke up to her friends screaming and banging on her door.

Ashlee Willis: And then I opened the door, and I was just like … I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s, I mean, it was biblical-looking. Like, it just, it, it made no sense what I was looking at.

Like, just, like, cars that I didn’t recognize, and campers, and, like, just people screaming. And, like, I’m rushing people into the house who can get to the house before my patio goes.

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee and five friends, two dogs, and two cats spent the night on top of her pool table.

Ashlee Willis: And just prayed that the water didn’t get taller than the ceiling.

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee’s mom, Brandy, and her husband, Greg, made it to the family’s greenhouse on higher ground. But Brandy and Greg realized that a couple of Ashlee’s friends were still trapped in the floodwaters. Greg, who had been trained as a ski patrol EMT, went to save them. Brandy was terrified.

Brandy Gerstner: You could hear people screaming.

There’s, um, there’s thunder, it’s lightning, it’s pouring down rain, and the re- sound of the rushing water. It’s just so many different noises all … It’s … It was just terrifying. And you’re just in the dark, in the rain

Kailey Hunt: Greg grabbed a tire and floated out to the car where Ashlee’s friends were trapped. One by one, he brought them to the greenhouse where they rode out the storm

Eventually, the waters receded and the sun rose. Ashlee documented the scene on TikTok.

Ashlee Willis: It’s all gone. Everything is gone. The pool, the brewery, the bar. Mama’s house is effed. This one is no better. Um-

Kailey Hunt: Where trees used to be, there was just flat earth. There were cars and pieces of decking, parts of metal roofs and wooden fences, and what looked like a hot pink kid’s toy, all piled up in a heap with trees and mud.

Outside Ashlee’s house, a dirty waterline showed floodwater had reached nearly the top of her front door. Her aunt’s house across the creek was gone, and they didn’t know where she was. They would eventually find her with the help of a 911 operator. She was in an emergency room. Turns out she had been swept miles downstream.

In the houses directly across the creek from Asher Acres, six people died. Ashlee and her group eventually made their way to their neighbor Ron’s house, which was located on a hill.

Ashlee Willis: And we all stayed on his porch, ’cause we were covered in gas and sewer, septic, and oil, whatever else is in that water. Later to be noted, nothing I thought about the day of, poison ivy, which I had in places we will not discuss

Kailey Hunt: The only road in and out of their part of the neighborhood had been overtaken by water from the creek. That meant they couldn’t get out, and help couldn’t get in. On July 5th, a first responder tried to drive a vehicle through the rushing water, but got stuck. Later that day, first responders came on a boat, and two of Ashlee’s friends were medically evacuated.

The rest, however, were told to stay put.

Ashlee Willis: And we’re like, “Hey, we totally get it. That’s fine.” But then it was, like, another day, and I’m like, “Uh…”

Kailey Hunt: They waited and waited. They were dirty. They were hot. They were covered in muck. They had no power. They were running out of drinking water. They said they called 911 multiple times, but still, nobody came.

Here’s Brandy.

Brandy Gerstner: And still having heard the night before all about Kerrville, and it was just loud on the news, and everybody heard it, and I’m thinking, “Well, surely somebody’s gonna be here for us.” But there wasn’t. There was no one.

Kailey Hunt: On the afternoon of the 6th, Ashlee and her group noticed the rushing water was slowing down.

With no expectation that help was on the way, they found a narrow plank of wood and used it like a balance beam to cross the road. Once they got to the other side, Ashlee said family members picked them up.

Ashlee Willis: It was a self-rescue, for sure

Kailey Hunt: Search and rescue teams were on the ground in Sandy Creek. Travis County Judge Andy Brown is responsible for coordinating disaster response and recovery efforts in Sandy Creek.

In Texas, a county judge is kind of the CEO of a county. According to Judge Brown, there were local responders in the area from the beginning of the flood. He said the first water rescue call was received on July 5th at 12:23 AM. Around 2:00 AM on the 5th, a rescue helicopter tried to respond to requests for help, but couldn’t because of low visibility and torrential rain.

From about 1:50 AM to 6:50 AM, 911 received 600 more calls than usual from the Sandy Creek area. By the end of the day on July 5th, many of the nearby cities and towns were providing emergency support. This is Judge Brown at that legislative hearing held on July 31st.

Judge Andy Brown: We had 78 first responders from all across Travis County, uh, Round Rock Fire, Austin Fire, Leander Fire, Austin Travis County EMS.

Kailey Hunt: The Texas Department of Emergency Management, or TDEM, had search teams out as early as July 5th. By that Monday, July 7th, TDEM took over the search and rescue operations, but still reported to the county. Judge Brown said that a lot of people were helping out.

Judge Andy Brown: They had over 560 people there in Travis County responding.

Kailey Hunt: I asked Judge Brown why Ashlee and Brandy hadn’t been evacuated, and he told me that even though he’s met them before, he hadn’t heard that part of their story.

Speaker 13: I’ve not heard of anyone that wasn’t evacuated that wanted to be evacuated. That is new info to me.

Kailey Hunt: After the flood, people converged on Sandy Creek looking for ways to help, just as they had in Kerr County When I made my first trip out to Sandy Creek on July 6th, I saw dozens of volunteers milling around the neighborhood, and many of them were just regular people, not affiliated with any groups.

They showed up with whatever equipment or supplies they had, ready to help. But at that time, there was no official group coordinating all of these volunteers. According to Judge Brown, it took Travis County four days after the flood to appoint an organization to lead the volunteer efforts. Speaking to me and Dominic back in May, Ashlee and Brandy acknowledged that there were government resources and volunteers in Sandy Creek, but for them it wasn’t enough.

Brandy Gerstner: You think you’re, you’re covered by having insurance. You think you’re covered, you pay your taxes. You think that, you know, something catastrophic to this degree, there would be people here, especially having deaths.

Ashlee Willis: But instead you just call 911 until everyone’s phone dies.

Brandy Gerstner: Yeah. And, and- Nothing. Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Kailey Hunt: Coming up after the break, Ashlee and Brandy start the long process of recovery and become advocates for Sandy Creek.

Brandy Gerstner: I mean, at 65, I never dreamed I’d be working as an activist to try and reform the government, seriously. Yeah, you are.

Ashlee Willis: High school me is so proud of me right now. She’s like, “Yeah, you go bully the government.”

Kailey Hunt: After Ashlee and her family rescued themselves, they were able to find rooms at an extended stay hotel about 25 minutes away from Sandy Creek. Unbeknownst to Ashlee, that would become their home for the next seven weeks. It was five days after the flood before they could return to their property. After that, Ashlee and her family would commute back to Sandy Creek.

Ashlee Willis: And, like, just work 10, 12-hour days just clearing debris, moving trash, moving earth, loading trash, loading earth. Just like, ugh.

Kailey Hunt: Brandi told me that though there were some government resources in the area, they were doing this cleanup work mostly with the help of friends, family, and volunteers.

Brandy Gerstner: It was literally neighbors helping neighbors.

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee chronicled this time on TikTok from her room at the extended stay. Wearing headphones, she sat in front of her phone camera and recapped each day. Sometimes her cat, Howard, would even make an appearance. Here she is talking about the fifth day after the flood, when search and rescue teams brought cadaver dogs onto their farm.

Ashlee Willis: Today sucked. I don’t know how to describe the sensation of, um, watching a cadaver dog signal on your property We still don’t know who it is. It’s, um, the debris is too thick. I think there might be a neighbor on our property.

Kailey Hunt: By day 10, you can hear the exhaustion in Ashlee’s voice.

Brandy Gerstner: Cadaver dogs,

Ashlee Willis: the coroner, the police, and an ambulance were all back again today I’m tired.

Kailey Hunt: This is day 12.

Ashlee Willis: We moved more trees, so many trees. I think we found the last missing man today, too.

Kailey Hunt: Like you heard at the beginning of this episode, Ashlee said they found a hip and a leg on their property. Experts we talked to said that, unfortunately, finding human remains is not unheard of after a deadly natural disaster

You might expect that when a disaster hits, the government will immediately be there to take care of you. But as I’ve learned talking to folks like Ashlee and Brandy, that’s not always the case. To learn why, I gave Laura Milani a call

Laura Mallonee: This is Laura.

Kailey Hunt: Laura is a journalist based in Austin. Last summer, she wrote a story about Sandy Creek titled Flood of Doubt for Grist, a nonprofit media organization that reports on climate change.

She first learned about the community through news reports and social media, and was struck by the fact that no one outside of the Austin area seemed to have heard about what happened. So 12 days after the flood, she went to a local church that was serving as a de facto operation center for volunteers.

It was there that Laura said she hitched a ride with a volunteer on their golf cart. They drove to some of the worst hit areas, including Ashlee’s neighborhood.

Laura Mallonee: The young woman that I was riding with on the golf cart, she was pretty angry, you know, about all this, and she was complaining that the county had not been out there, that they hadn’t seen anybody.

Kailey Hunt: It was a sentiment Laura said she heard from a lot of people in Sandy Creek. Meanwhile, Travis County officials insisted they were doing everything possible to help.

Laura Mallonee: Even though Travis County was deploying a lot of resources, they were, they weren’t doing so in a way that, um, Sandy Creek residents were really hoping for, and that tracks with kind of a broader disconnect that tends to happen in unincorporated communities after disasters.

Kailey Hunt: Laura said this disconnect between the amount of resources that are deployed versus what people expect is common among the 30% of Americans who live in areas like Sandy Creek. She said these unincorporated areas are especially vulnerable because they don’t have a municipal government to rely on.

Laura Mallonee: I talked to Michelle Meyer at Texas A&M’s Hazard Recovery Center, and she said that, you know, after disasters, people tend to expect that the government will come in like a knight on a white horse, um, when in reality the, the government is a bare minimum safety net.

Kailey Hunt: And that gap isn’t limited to unincorporated areas.

Jeff Schlegelmilch: In virtually every disaster situation I’ve, uh, been a part of or been exposed to, this is a common complaint.

Kailey Hunt: This is Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Jeff said that disaster relief can be really cumbersome from an organizational standpoint since it can involve so many different federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as nonprofit and other private sector organizations.

Jeff Schlegelmilch: We can see what an enormous task it is just to coordinate all this, and they’re very sort of, uh, complex systems, a lot of checklists, a lot of forms for managing things like an emergency operations center to try to keep, keep everything moving.

Kailey Hunt: Jeff’s point became clear when I talked with Judge Brown about Travis County’s response to the flood.

Judge Andy Brown: It’s a little amorphous to say count the county because these, this was a, a response that was led by the county, but involved FEMA, involved TDEM, involved private donors, and involved all those things, and that was all coordinated by the county.

Kailey Hunt: And that coordination can take time. Here’s Jeff again.

Jeff Schlegelmilch: I think our expectations of what government can do are sometimes misaligned with, with how quickly they can actually move.

Kailey Hunt: I asked Judge Brown what he would say to the families in Sandy Creek who thought that Travis County’s response was inadequate.

Speaker 13: Yeah, I, I, I don’t disagree with their feelings at all. Their feelings are completely legitimate to feel that way. Um, at the same time, there were, uh, there was a massive response effort.

These are called disasters for a reason. They are a disaster. They are a chaotic environment, and, um, the county’s role in all of that is to help coordinate what is the response. So you might not see Somebody wearing a shirt that says, “I’m with Travis County,” but you will see people from Mississippi searching for, uh, remains.

You’ll see people from H-E-B handing out goods, and all of those, all of that is part of the response and the relief effort, um, that happens when, when you have a mass disaster like this.

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee and her family weren’t just disappointed with the county’s response. They were frustrated on many levels. They did have flood insurance, which puts them in the minority in Sandy Creek.

Less than 4% of homeowners in the area have flood insurance, but they’re in a dispute over how much insurance money they’re going to get. They’ve applied for aid through FEMA, but their claim was denied. Brandi said they can appeal the decision, but the agency won’t approve their claim until they’ve received payment from their flood insurance company.

FEMA did, however, partially cover the cost of their hotel stay, and Brandi’s sister, Donna, was able to get help from FEMA, but it wasn’t easy.

Ashlee Willis: The first thing they asked my Aunt Donna for when they met her on the property was proof of her identity, which makes sense, like, in an abstract way, but her entire house, they’ve never found any piece of it.

I mean, it’s gone. It’s in Lake Travis. Like, everything she owns is gone.

Kailey Hunt: Luckily, Donna’s bank had a copy of her driver’s license. She was able to get the maximum amount of individual assistance from FEMA, which is about $43,000. Brandi said this process is a lot to take on for disaster survivors.

Brandy Gerstner: The amount of bureaucracy and paperwork and the requirements that they expect you to have receipts for this and proof of that, and it’s- It’s exhausting

it’s, it’s so many pages. I mean, they’re like 10 pages long to fill these things out, and for people who’ve just been through, you know, such a traumatic event, most of us had lost everything. Like, where are we gonna get this information from?

Kailey Hunt: I asked a spokesperson for FEMA for a response to what Brandi said.

The spokesperson told me the agency doesn’t comment on individual cases, but that FEMA has allocated more than $268 million to flood recovery in Texas. Over time, Ashlee started to see herself not just as a resident of Sandy Creek, but also as an advocate. She wanted her family, her friends, her neighbors to be seen.

She began meeting with county officials. This is Ashlee in a TikTok video 15 days after the flood.

Ashlee Willis: I had a very late meeting tonight as a community leader of Sandy Creek with the county, and while no problems were actually solved, we’re not gonna reinvent Rome in a day, uh, concerns were heard Make her heard

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee was determined to get the word out about what the people in Sandy Creek had been through.

So on July 23rd, she went to a legislative meeting about the floods in Austin.

Senator Charles Perry: Senate Flood Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding will come to order. Clerk will call the roll.

Clerk: Chairman Perry?

Senator Charles Perry: Here.

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee went to share her family’s story Senator Betancourt? But once she got there, she learned that the only people who could speak had to have been invited.

The meeting lasted over 11 hours, but Ashlee said she didn’t hear Sandy Creek mentioned.

Ashlee Willis: And I’m like, “Okay.” Uh, that made me angry.

Kailey Hunt: Then Ashlee heard there was going to be another state hearing on July 31st, but this time in Kerrville.

Ashlee Willis: Oh, we have to drive to Kerrville to be heard? You were just in Travis County.

Like, okay, cool, cool, cool. So we made sure we got there first. We were the first people to sign up for public testimony.

Kailey Hunt: You heard some of Ashlee’s testimony at the beginning of this episode. Ashlee showed up with a list of suggestions for the committee. She wanted a real flood mitigation plan. She wanted rain gauges.

She wanted someone to monitor the tributaries. She wanted standardized training and licensing for emergency management officials. She wanted access to temporary housing. She wanted water testing, and she wanted better emergency response coordination between agencies. The committee chair, Senator Charles Perry, thought those were good ideas.

Senator Charles Perry: Those recommendations would be extremely helpful. Um, any written testimony that you can get to the committee the next week, if you can get them to the Capitol or get them to my office or Chairman King’s office, either way, we’ll make sure the members get them. Appreciate that.

Kailey Hunt: For most of us, getting the government to take action is a long process that may not yield results.

But Ashlee and the others that showed up to the state hearing were in a unique situation. They spoke to lawmakers, and bills were passed. Senate Bill 3 allocated $50 million for the installation of siren systems in flood-prone areas in Texas. Senate Bill 5 allocated around $300 million in disaster relief.

Ashlee Willis: Two weeks later, I’m back at the Capitol discussing bills. Two or three weeks after that, they’re signed by Governor Abbott, and I’m like, “Holy. What? Okay”

Kailey Hunt: Other things Ashlee asked for, like better training for emergency managers, didn’t pass. Of course, there were many people asking the legislature to take action, but for Ashlee, being heard like this was especially empowering.

Ashlee and Brandye were not the only people in Sandy Creek who were advocating for the community. In August, members of the neighborhood, including Ashlee and Brandye, got together to form the Sandy Creek Alliance to fight for even more legislative changes. Then in November, the alliance delivered a petition with 600 signatures to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office.

They were asking for a permanent state disaster relief fund, which they call the Texas Forever Fund. If approved, this fund would disperse money directly to disaster survivors instead of to local governments or nonprofits. That same month, the alliance held a demonstration in front of the governor’s home in hopes of drawing attention to the need for the fund.

Brandye was one of the event’s keynote speakers.

Brandy Gerstner: It is our request that moving forward, that $500 million be granted to the Texas Forever Fund so that no future deve- disaster survivors go through the horror that we have and are still to this day struggling with. Brandye

Kailey Hunt: and Ashlee also helped organize the Travis County Recovery Alliance, a coalition of faith-based groups, nonprofits, and county partners.

The goal is to make sure that people in Travis County can get the help they need after a disaster. Here’s Judge Brown talking about it.

Speaker 13: It’s not led by the county, but it will be an important asset in all future disasters because we’ll already have that communication among those folks already set of how that goes.

Kailey Hunt: And Ashlee and Brandye aren’t just advocating locally. In December, they traveled to Washington, D.C. with a group called Organizing Resilience, which is made up of climate disaster survivors from across the country.

Ashlee Willis: I think the most fascinating part, um, like when we went to D.C., 95 disaster survivors- Mm-hmm

um, across 10 states and Puerto Rico, earth, air, wind, fire, every version of a disaster that- Yeah … you could think of were represented, and the aftermath is exactly the same for everybody. It, nothing- It doesn’t matter … is different. Nothing works.

Kailey Hunt: They went to the nation’s capital to speak against the possible downsizing of FEMA.

This is Brandye.

Brandy Gerstner: We are calling for FEMA to be an independent, fully funded, and far more robust system, not weakened, not politicized, but strengthened because when FEMA cannot fully function, real people pay the price. What happened in Sandy Creek cannot be allowed to happen again

Kailey Hunt: That was a bit hard to hear, but Brandy basically said that people like herself will suffer consequences if FEMA is downsized, and the Trump administration has been doing just that, significantly reducing the agency’s funding and workforce.

The administration recently recommended changes to the way FEMA functions that could shift more responsibility for disaster recovery to states. Some of these changes would need to be approved by Congress No one is more surprised by their advocacy work than Brandy herself.

Brandy Gerstner: I mean, at 65, I never dreamed I’d be working as an activist to try and reform the government, seriously.

Yeah, you are. I’m a retired nurse. I was so, uh, you know, public speaking and all of this was not my gig.

Ashlee Willis: High school me is so proud of me right now. She’s like, “Yeah, you go bully the government.”

Kailey Hunt: This work, Ashlee says, has also brought them closer to their community.

Ashlee Willis: That’s my favorite part of this entire story.

Mm-hmm. Like, you don’t move this far out in the country to get to know your neighbors- Seriously … you know what I mean? Um, and then the flood takes all of your trees away, and all of a sudden you’re like, “Howdy, neighbor,” from across the creek, you know? Um, it’s really brought us together. Mm-hmm. Like, aside from political differences, like, you know, like we all suffered this trauma together.

And, like, to say that Sandy Creek is a community now, like if you would’ve asked 13-month-ago me, I would’ve laughed.

Kailey Hunt: This community that Ashlee talks about, it’s not just good from a vibes perspective. It also may help them in the future. Jeff Schlegelmilch told me that people often view disaster preparedness as having enough food or water to sustain them.

Jeff Schlegelmilch: But I should note that the strongest predictor of how communities and how individuals do after a disaster is actually social capital and social cohesion, how connected we are to each other.

Kailey Hunt: Things like backyard barbecues and block parties with your neighbors, they’re important.

Jeff Schlegelmilch: So communities that are very connected horizontally, this is neighbors helping neighbors, tend to have much stronger health and mental health outcomes in the aftermath of a disaster.

We check in on each other. We, we uplift each other. We look out for each other, and that is a very measurable impact.

Kailey Hunt: That’s playing out in real time in Sandy Creek.

Ashlee Willis: Those garlic beds over there, right, those were donated. Yeah. It was a surprise for Mom and Dad. And we come home, and it’s the communists, the socialists, three men in a MAGA hat, a dude in a kilt, and a priest that all did that work together, and then they had a beer afterwards.

Brandy Gerstner: For two days, they worked together, and they all ended up friends because literally we are all human beings down here, and when push comes to shove, every- We show up for each other … we, yeah, we’re, we’re there. The needs get met, and people come together, and politics and garbage just go, go goodbye.

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee and Brandy may have lost a lot, but they don’t wanna move from Asher Acres.

They wanna stay on their family’s property.

Ashlee Willis: We’ve been here for 36

Brandy Gerstner: years. 30, right, yeah,

Ashlee Willis: we’ve got- My grandparents passed away here. Grandma passed away here. Like- Yeah … I’m gonna take care of Mom and Dad until they pass away here, and I’m gonna have to bribe one of my nieces or nephews to take care of me.

It’ll be fine.

Kailey Hunt: Rebuilding is easier said than done. That’s because in 2019, Travis County adopted new rules for building in certain flood-prone areas. The new rules require residents to elevate the bases of new residential structures: in other words, build homes that are lifted off the ground. And that can be expensive

Ashlee Willis: It’s like 80 to $100,000, like-

Brandy Gerstner: Just for the base- The steel structure

before you can even start building your home.

Kailey Hunt: And even though they want their property to be safer, the cost was almost too much for them.

Brandy Gerstner: My first response is there’s gotta be a way around this. Mm-hmm. There is. You know, and how can they tell me how to build? Why can’t on my property I choose to take the risk?

It’s a Texas property- Texas property are people

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee said they do plan on following the rules.

Ashlee Willis: But we also need to be working on what’s causing that problem. It can’t be left up to the people who have suffered catastrophic losses to be the only one that’s doing anything to make the world a safer- Correct

place where they are. Like, there needs to be systemic changes made, and that’s the frustrating part for me.

Kailey Hunt: Ashlee and Brandy had yet to break ground on their new homes when Dominic and I visited in May. They were still living in their campers on the farm, and Brandy told us they were not the only ones.

Brandy Gerstner: I think it’s important that people understand that there’s still so many people who are out here that are still homeless, living in campers and trailers. Um, there’s still a great need for funds for a lot of these people. Um, you know, people, all the news and everybody’s here, and, you know, it’s a big deal for, you know, burst of time.

Um, but this disaster is still just that. It, people need help.

Kailey Hunt: Of the 115 properties in Travis County affected by the flood, only two have been fully rebuilt or repaired. And a recent survey showed that half of the survivors of last year’s flood in Texas said they felt abandoned by government.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: Next time on After the Flood, it’s been a year. Is Central Texas any safer, any more protected than it was last year?

Mark Rose: If all of the rest of this work isn’t done, then, you know, your, your legacy of sirens is gonna bite you in the butt someday.

Dominic Anthony Walsh: This episode was written by me, Kately Hunt, and Elizabeth McQueen.

Our editor was Elizabeth McQueen. Anna Campbell is our executive producer, and Elizabeth McQueen is our producer. Our editors at Frontline are Aaron Texeira and Mia Zukercandl. Our music is by Rene Chavez and APM, and our audio producers are Casey Cheek, Jake Perelman, and Matt Largey. Our multimedia editor is Deborah Cannon, and Michael Menassi is our multimedia producer.

Our fact-checker is Ana Alvarado, and our attorney is Thomas Leatherberry. Erin Geisler oversees our marketing, and our cover was designed by Maile Carballo. Corey McClagan is the executive editor of the Texas Newsroom. The Texas Newsroom is a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in the state, including Houston Public Media, KUT in Austin, Texas Public Radio in San Antonio, and KERA in North Texas.

This project received editorial and financial support from Frontline’s Local Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.