For the second time in two years, CeCe Jean Saunders was rebuilding.
Last July, floodwaters inundated the dance and cheerleading studio that Ms. Saunders runs in Kerrville, Texas. It was the first time that the studio, a little blue building on the banks of the Guadalupe River, had taken on water in its 40 years.
It seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime disaster. Repairs totaled about $100,000.
Then this week, it happened again.
“The water came last year from behind us,” Ms. Saunders said in an interview on Friday as volunteers shoveled debris and muck from inside the studio. “This year, it just came from everywhere.”
The river water rushed through the property on Thursday morning, when it was still dark. It ripped away the prop shed, with its pompoms and boas and homemade costumes, and flooded the dance studio. It swept under the expensive wooden cheer floor, which was just replaced after last year’s flood.
By Friday, as the rains began to ease across the devastated Texas Hill Country, a sludge covered the building’s parking lot. The river was still thick with felled trees and other debris. But amid the wreckage, Ms. Saunders saw blessings.
A small boy in a trucker hat and cowboy boots helped pick up trash. A friend offered to lend a power washer. A woman, wearing all pink, arrived with hot food wrapped in tin foil.
“God is good,” she said, gesturing to the volunteers who showed up to help. “I mean, look at this. Look at how many people are here today. We’ve got generations.”
The studio has been in Ms. Saunders’s family since she and her mother, Peggy Anne Hannemann, began teaching there, on the banks of the river, in the 1980s. Her father, Fred, operated a barbershop nearby. She began teaching cheer in the 1990s. The studio now has around 350 students, she said.
Inside the soiled studio on Friday, Taylen Long, 7, helped sweep away flood water. She takes cheer, tap and jazz classes and wanted everyone around to know she loves her teachers. Her mother, Shyla, also took tap and cheer classes at the studio.
The cleanup work wasn’t all that difficult, Taylen assured her mother. “Not as hard as cheer!” she declared.
Ms. Saunders said she was grateful to be dealing with only the the loss of things — and not any loss of life. A blessing.
She said she had lost her cool only once amid the damage and chaos, when she thought a massive concrete barber pole that used to stand outside her dad’s shop had disappeared in the flood. Minutes later, she found it on the banks of the river. Another blessing.
More than 130 people died across Central Texas during the deadly flooding last July. Kerrville and the small towns of Kerr County, in the Hill Country west of San Antonio, were the hardest hit. The devastation at nearby summer camps, especially the 28 deaths at Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ camp, shocked the state and prompted new warning systems and other flood precautions.
Many people in the area were still rebuilding from those devastating floods when torrential rains began this week. Rivers again surged, including the Guadalupe. But this time, few were killed. The mayor of Kerrville said all of the city’s residents were accounted for.
Up and down the street outside Ms. Saunders’s studio, business owners assessed the damage on Friday and expressed relief. It could have been worse, they said.
“We’ve recovered before,” said Lisa Nye-Salladin, who runs a bike shop near the studio. “We’ll do it again.”
Across the street from the studio, Ann Torres, 13, helped her parents clean out what was left of their apartment in a hard-hit complex. Soiled clothes, toys and mementos were piled in the middle of each room. Outside, they stacked their muddy shoes.
They had only just begun to replace their furniture after it had been ruined during last year’s floods, Ann said. They didn’t think it could happen again.
Then the river rose early Thursday, rushing in under their doors and through the windows. In the darkness, the water rose, Ann recalled. One foot. Then two feet. Then three. Outside, car alarms blared. Through the window, she saw the family’s blue Mustang float away. Three rescue workers helped bring the family to safety.
The family planned to move out of the apartment, but vowed to remain in Kerrville — “a good place to live,” when it’s not flooding, said Ann’s father, Fernando Guerrero Torres. “It’s tranquil,” he said.
By Friday afternoon, much of the grayish sludge was gone from the parking lot at Ms. Saunders’s studio. The sun began cutting through the clouds.
Ms. Saunders said she would stay put, for now. But, she added, if the studio floods a third time next year, she may consider a move.
Sweaty and covered in mud, she clutched a stack of black and red hats that somehow survived the storm. She held them aloft with a huge smile.
“The top hats,” she declared, “are saved!”
The post ‘The Top Hats Are Saved!’ A Texas Dance Studio Weathers Another Major Flood. appeared first on New York Times.
