VIDEO/PHOTOS: First there was a flood that raced through and ravaged the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department. Now there is a flood of caring volunteers. Some are doing recovery work, while the rest are making sure those folks have what they need to keep going. While Center Point volunteer firefighters were out trying to save lives early Friday morning during the deadly flood, their own fire station, located downstream, was completely overwhelmed by the raging Guadalupe River.
“I’ve been here all my life and it’s never been this high,” said volunteer firefighter Sammy Burney. Burney said many years ago, when the building was under construction and at the slab foundation stage, one high water event left the slab covered in mud. But since then, they’ve had no trouble. This time, though, he said water overwhelmed the building, leaving high-water marks on walls about six feet off the ground-proof of just how catastrophic the July Fourth flash floods were. The water that came up fast and furiously washed much of their equipment downstream.
Burney said all the fire trucks were saved because they did have time to move them to higher ground before they were called to start rescuing people trapped in high water. “A lot of it’s gone, equipment and so forth is gone, and I don’t know what all we lost,” Burney said, adding the flood of volunteers that showed up after the water receded is just about as surprising. “It’s amazing that we were surprised that we had so many people coming in to help,” he added. “It was really wild. Right now we’ve got people from all over everywhere. I don’t know where they came from.”
