I didn’t take any pictures, but it was jarring to see what a flood could do. I was only there a day and a half and only two sites in Leander. There was a car in a house - and the house a few hundred yards from where it started. Dogs had come through and cleared the wreckage areas we worked on (so we knew nobody was in them).
The bits of detritus were usually recognizable. You just had to dig it out, brush it off, and ask yourself what part of a life it was. Sometimes debris was clustered together in ways that made sense - mud full of tools from a workshop, a living room strewn throughout the brush, panels of a roof or wall or floor pinned between trees by the flow.
I remember seeing panels of a bee hive tucked into a large heap of junk, then finding more down river - perhaps a quarter mile. The bees were still rummaging around trying to recover the honey on those. The water was just a trickle while we were there, with perhaps 20 or 30 feet of bank.
Across the riverbed from where we worked though, you could see a football field worth (perhaps several) of space where the water had cut a corner and shaved away the forest. It was just a dry field of dirt and rocks sloping down to where the water now trickled. The rocks and earth looked loose and mangled - perhaps because of footsteps, or the way the mud dried, or the way the roots were torn, I’m not sure.
The relief efforts were organic yet organized. I doubt it seemed that way to everyone (and I had very limited vantage - I do not know how responsively resources and people were allocated across damaged areas) but I had no expectations and was generally surprised and impressed to see a range of productive roles had emerged for varied skillsets and abilities. This seemed partly the result of project managers of different levels of formality and scale (I think our leads did an excellent job in this respect), but also the result of initiative and prior experience of volunteers (e.g. in military contexts or in construction / demolition), as well as the result of logic and agency. Folks who could operate equipment did so (chainsaws, bobcats). Others compiled, washed, and stored found objects. Young folks brought around gatorade and cold towels. Pizza appeared at some point. Folks in high visibility vests or military garb or with corporate construction gear were regularly walking around and talking to volunteer organizers about what resources they could offer or directing them to where they were needed. Somehow, dumpster trucks showed, got filled, and were taken away pretty regularly.
Our group seemed mostly made up of ex military folks (who wore tactical pants and used language like ‘muster’ and ‘convoy’), a crew of Hispanic guys (spoke mostly Spanish and executed nonstop), and a few weekend do-gooders like me (clearly less equipped for the environ but figuring it out). Other groups I saw were composed of families and friends and I think church groups.
On the whole, the atmosphere was something between the setup / take-down of a county fair or music festival, a junkyard, and a relaxed military facility (the last being purely based on my imagination and likely far off).
I kept thinking of how I would describe the wreckage to someone without talking about water. It was so hot and dry the first day - there was a certain gross irony to parking coolers on dirt that had been deep under during the flood. I kept imagining some absurd, giant squirrel rampaging through the area - punching holes in houses and strewing their contents over the dirt - burying some items for later while flinging others into trees out of spite. I think it was a reassuring daydream. Imaginary animal capriciousness must have seemed more innocent. I found it difficult to grasp the volume of water or think about the forces it produced. One of the property owners nearby on the first day had lost his whole family. Other families were safe and together.
On the second day there, I found an pregnancy ultrasound scan photo in the mud. It rained that day and they had everyone evacuate the areas along the river again.