KERRVILLE, Texas — Valerie Tucker woke to pounding on the front door at 2:30 a.m. She and her husband had been asleep in their rental home in Hunt, Texas, right along the Guadalupe River.
It was July 4, 2025, and the homeowner’s son came to tell them the river was rising rapidly.
“‘We gotta go. We gotta go now. It’s late,’” Tucker recalled him shouting.
In just 45 minutes, the Guadalupe rose almost 26 feet. That morning, the river crested 38 feet above its normal level — enough to flood the entire area. Tucker and her husband, Danny, found higher ground following alerts issued by Kerr County.
Like many others, Tucker lost her home in the flood. Water destroyed roads and buildings, too, but the town of about 26,000 lost more than property. The floods killed 119, including 25 campers and two counselors at nearby Camp Mystic, and displaced many more.
That morning, Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr. signed a disaster declaration at the city’s emergency center. That’s when he and the rest of Kerrville learned what happened.
“There was a lot of phone calls coming in and some said, ‘Hey, there’s a report of 40 kids missing from Camp Mystic,’” Herring Jr. said. “I think for most of us, that’s the first time we realized we have more than a flood.”
The flooding wasn’t a one-off. This July, the rivers rose again, killing two people, closing main bridges and roads in Kerrville and damaging at least 50 businesses — an estimated $55 million in losses so far, Herring Jr. said.
Even before this year’s flooding, wreckage from 2025 littered the landscape. Tucker, who lost her home, was able to find a new one in about eight months.
A Kerrville mortgage lender, Leslie Robinson, was part of the relief effort. She said a man experiencing homelessness was rescued from a tree and taken to the emergency room.
“It was a year ago, but it feels like 10 years ago it happened,” Robinson said. “It was our little town that, in an instant, will never be the same.”
Quick response
The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country was one of the first groups to raise money for victims of last year’s flooding.
Established in 1981, the community foundation gives grants to nonprofits and awards scholarships in 10 Central Texas counties.
In the week following the disaster, the foundation raised $30 million and distributed $5 million in emergency assistance, CEO Austin Dickson said. In total, the organization raised $150 million. It has set up a new fund to help after this year’s flood.
Local mortgage lenders, real estate agents and businesses provided necessities, and the foundation provided mental health support in addition to financial aid.
“We had so many displaced people, and we knew that mental health was going to be a challenge,” Dickson said.
Most of the money raised went to a down payment assistance program, offering up to $175,000 to people who qualify. The money can be used to buy or rent a house, furniture, clothes, bills and other necessities.
Kerrville’s community response was critical because flood survivors could not rely entirely on the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA supported state and local recovery efforts in the days after the flood. But the government shutdown in late 2025 halted funding approvals across the country, including in Kerrville.
“It was a year ago, but it feels like 10 years ago it happened. It was our little town that, in an instant, will never be the same.”Leslie Robinson · Kerrville mortgage lender
In May, the FEMA Review Council proposed moving primary disaster funding to state and local levels, with the federal government serving in a supporting role. The proposal had not reached Congress as of late July 2026.
“Was (FEMA) perfect? Was it fast? Was it comprehensive? No, but it was there,” Dickson said.
The joy of a new home
Tucker said she never imagined that within eight months of the flood, she would become a homeowner.
“The first morning we’re at the hotel room, I turn the TV on, it’s on a local news channel. There’s our house. They’re at our house, filming our house on the news channel,” Tucker said.
She remembered thinking, “Is this happening?”
Four days later, she and her husband returned to their rental. They needed a ladder to get into the house; the stairs were broken. The couple planned to salvage what they could from the flood.
“By then everything had a white, moldy fuzz growing on it. So it was like, OK, everything to me felt contaminated,” Tucker said. She only salvaged some clothes.
Their new reality set in: They needed a new place to live.
In December 2025, five months after the flood, a friend told Tucker about the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country.
Tucker submitted all the necessary information to the assistance program. Working with Robinson as her mortgage lender, she was approved for a $175,000 grant to buy a house.
After staying in different places since the July flood, Tucker’s journey to owning her first house had begun.
On March 3, Tucker and her husband found their perfect home: a three-bedroom in the same neighborhood they rented in.
“We were sold on this one, this location with these neighbors. We already kind of fell in love with it,” Tucker said.
The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country also partnered with Kerrville Habitat for Humanity to house survivors: The foundation provided grant money, and Habitat built the houses. All told, they constructed 10 new homes and rebuilt or repaired 40 more.
The Riverside Church of Christ also stepped up to help provide beds, furniture, household goods and money.
“We received a lot of money in order to help, and every penny of that has gone to rebuilding homes,” preacher Chris Carrillo said.
How we made this
News21 fellows Aidan Calkins and Sophie Farrell traveled to Kerrville, Texas, for four days, to report on the disaster recovery process since floods in 2025. They spoke with the mayor, community foundation and a survivor who lives there.
Challenges across America
Rural communities recovering from disasters don’t always receive the same resources. Around the same time as the 2025 Kerrville floods, a flood hit Wheeling, West Virginia.
“They raised less than $1 million for their disaster, and they actually had significant damage in their community,” Dickson said. “It’s unequal in how funds are raised in America after a disaster.”
Part of the success in Kerrville was exposure. Dickson and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott went on national television several times asking for help and support to rebuild.
Though all that money helped hundreds of people, the resources are limited. The foundation prioritized essential workers and those with little to no means to rebuild.
“They are embedded in core entities in our town, law enforcement, first responders and teachers,” Dickson said. “They’re people that are going to stay put in our community.”
As of June 18, the foundation has given $82 million and helped over 1,500 families.
Those who qualify for the down payment assistance program must have an income between $60,000 and $125,000. Affected flood victims must have lived, and been displaced, in Kerr County and qualify for a mortgage loan. Once approved, participants must buy a house in Texas.
In September 2025, the Texas Legislature passed a law to fund disaster sirens along the state’s most dangerous floodplains, including eight along the Guadalupe River where Tucker lived.
Eight months after the flood, she and her husband moved into their new home — the one they own, thanks to the support of the Kerrville community.
Tucker said she felt at peace walking the perimeter of the home she lost for the first time since July 4, 2025. She doesn’t think of the tragedies from that day, but prefers to remember good memories she made there.
“It was really sad the first couple months, but now it’s, it turned really good, really fast,” Tucker said.
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