Bastrop fire victims still need help

BASTROP, Texas (KXAN) - Labor Day Weekend 2011: Ruth Rodgers was returning from a road trip, after delivering her daughter to college. She topped the crest of a hill just outside Bastrop and was stunned by the enormous cloud of black smoke hovering over the town.

Farther down the highway, Rodgers came upon a family fleeing the flames. She helped family members lead their horses to safety and then returned to help them drive their vehicles out of the flames’ reach.

Then she noticed authorities rushing to set up barricades on State Highway 71 and she pitched in to help them.

By now, text messages were flying between members of various Bastrop school booster clubs. People were gathering at first one spot, then another, looking for ways to help.

The tents

In the days that followed, Rodgers and her friend, Laurie Eskew, found a spot under a tree and pitched a small tent and started helping fire victims fill out Federal Emergency Management Agency applications for government assistance.

Trucks started pulling up, loaded from floor to ceiling with tons and tons of donated goods. Among them, a huge event tent that the women had erected at the entrance to the hard hit Tahitian Village neighborhood to house their relief operation.

Then the rains came. Rodgers and Eskew rushed off to buy tarps to protect the donated goods from the water that blew in under the tent.

The building

Realizing that if they were to keep meeting the overwhelming needs of their community, they would need a brick and mortar site. They found a large space in a small shopping center at 201 Childers Street, just off Hwy. 71.

The owner was in India at the time, but they were able to contact him by telephone and he offered the place, rent free, for the rest of the year. Come New Year’s Day, when it the time to start paying rent arrived, area churches started picking up the tab.

Meanwhile, fire victims who had felt abandoned when the tent disappeared from the “top of Tahitian,” began to learn about the Childers Street store. They descended on the place in waves.

The Bastrop County Fire Relief Distribution Center was born.

The surplus

But in nearby Austin, the Salvation Army was doing something unheard of: begging people to stop donating relief supplies and goods.

“The first message to the public,” Capt. Mike Morton said, “is: ‘Stop! Stop! We have enough; we have more than enough.’”

“We were overloaded,” Rodgers recalled. “We were extremely overloaded. A lot of people don't understand that we appreciated that help. We did and we did get it. It ran through this very center right here. Those donations that people did drop off, it did hit the families; they got their stuff.”

The donors

But that was a year ago. Things are different now. Those truckloads of stuff stopped coming months ago. But a steady stream of smaller donors still arrives every single day, dropping off clothes, books, toys, furniture. Bins and shelves are laden with dog and cat foods.

Among the donors: Betty Pearce, who barely escaped the horrid fate experienced by so many of her neighbors.

“It (the fire) came right up to our house,” she said. “God had a border all around us. We stayed there and prayed and we're OK.”

But if Pearce’s home escaped the physical damage, she still suffered, watching the pain of her neighbors.

So she began making regular trips to the center after repeated cullings of the accoutrements of her life. Today, it was some plastic bags stuffed with children’s playthings.

“It's amazing,” she said, “how much stuff you have stashed away that you don't use. And I had all these collections for kids and stuff. So, you know, let the kids have it.”

Behind Pearce in the non-air-conditioned building there was a large fan, struggling to move the hot summer air. Behind it, stood two large refrigerators full of dozens of brown organic eggs, rejected by grocery stores because they are just a bit too small.

The clients

Fire victim James Hellam helped himself.

"You don't want to be greedy," he said, "so I just take a couple (of dozen) every time I come. Two dozen eggs will last me four days. It depends on whether my grandsons are visiting me or not.

"They only eat organic so it's nice that they have organic eggs here. My daughter's a vegetarian and my son only eats fish or something like that, you know. I just do what I'm supposed to do when he's out here visiting me.

"Next I'll get dog food and then I'm on my way, another good visit in the center."

Nearby, survivor Carol Schumacher laid claim to a few pieces of crown molding to use in rebuilding her house.

“We lost everything,” she said. We lost our home; we lost the shop, the kids' stuff, you know, everything, burnt up, gone.

“Luckily, we've had really good friends and they've been there for us and community and other people and this place. And we had insurance so we're lucky there, too.”

One of Schumacher’s friends is Lorraine Joy, another wildfire victim who has also made good use of the distribution center.

"I kind of feel