Looking back on that July night, Valerie Mares has no doubt that the only reason she and her husband, Danny, are alive today is because of a neighbor who pounded on the front door of their riverfront home in Hunt, Texas, shouting, “You got to get out of here now.”
It was 2:45 a.m. on July 4, 2025, and the couple jumped in their cars and managed to flee to higher ground even as boulders, dislodged by the downpour, tumbled down hillsides around them.
“Our neighbors two houses down got swept away as they tried heading up a nearby hill,” Mares, 48, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.
In the year since Texas Hill Country was hit by a catastrophic deluge that claimed the lives of 139 people — while also damaging thousands of homes and causing more than $18 billion worth of economic losses — debris still flutters from the branches of cypress trees, bent from the storm, lining the riverbank.
The Guadalupe is calm now, flowing languidly as families can be seen splashing in the cool waters. But countless Texans are haunted by the deadly flood and struggling to find a path forward.
After the waters receded, Valerie and Danny, 42, made it back to their flooded rental home to find the interior and their belongings blanketed in white, fuzzy mold.
They spent months living in temporary housing paid for by the Hunt Preservation Society and then the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country — which raised a staggering $150 million in donations — provided them with a down payment for a three-bedroom home in Kerrville that they moved into in March.
Austin Dickson, the foundation’s CEO, says that in helping Mares, as with so many others, “We have really focused on choice and each family’s unique circumstances. And I’m really proud of the results.”
Shana McDiarmid and her now-boyfriend, Cameron, are another couple who benefitted from the foundation after their rental property was ravaged thanks to its proximity to the river. Luckily, they were away at the time, in a neighborhood near Kerrville.
“There wasn’t anything to retrieve [at our home] … There wasn’t anything left in inside. It was all washed away,” says McDiarmid, 43.
Nonetheless, she says, the way strangers have rallied through the Community Foundation and other efforts has been more than touching.
“They really should be a case study for the rest of the United States,” she says. With help, she and her husband were able to buy a two-bedroom home in the center of Kerrville.
Mares, too, shares her deep gratitude. “We appreciate the Community Foundation more than they’ll ever know,” she says. “Living with all this wears you down, but they really made all the difference.”
As for exactly when Mares, who grew up on the river, plans on returning to the Guadalupe itself — she can’t say.
“We haven’t been back yet,” she says. “We’ve talked about it and I’m sure one day we will, but I’m just not ready yet. Maybe next year.”
She pauses for a moment, clearly thinking back to the details of that harrowing night one year ago, then adds: “It all happened so fast. This wasn’t a normal flood. This was something totally different.”
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