Chef serving up meals in Kerr County flood aftermath for 40+ days heads home

AUSTIN (KXAN) — For more than 40 days, Arturo Ramon has been serving up meals — on his own dime — to volunteers responding to and community members affected by the devastating and deadly flooding in Kerr County.

Now, it’s time to go home — but the message he wants to share is that the work to help rebuild will be continuing for a long time.

“You can kind of see the transition happening right now,” Ramon said, recalling how in the early days he fed a lot of first responders, but now it’s people working to clean up tons and tons of debris. “But there’s going to be a need for help out here, and financial help, for many, many months to come.”

Ramon first set up at a fire station in Center Point, where the Guadalupe River cuts through the community located about halfway between Comfort and Kerrville on State Highway 27 in the Hill Country. He finished up his work west of there in another town nestled on that river: Hunt. Farther down the river from Hunt are summer camps, including Camp Mystic where 27 campers and counselors were killed when the waters rose overnight.

Over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, more than 117 people were killed in the floods in Kerr County. On Thursday, Ramon spoke with KXAN reporter Brianna Hollis on FaceTime and showed her the area near the Hunt Store (now just a “shell of a building”) where he set up his smokers and serving tent. The spot has become a hub for meals and supplies.

“It still looks like a bomb went off out here, you know,” he said as he described the progress of cleaning up.

The same day he shared his observations, the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country announced $40 million in donations would go directly to help people affected by the floods find places to stay and rebuild. Residents must apply for that funding online.

Ramon — who owns Blanco River Meat Company about 2 hours away from Hunt, in Driftwood — said his last day serving meals is Friday. But he’s accomplished what he first told KXAN he planned to do: cook for heroes.

“Everybody wants to help,” Ramon said of dealing with the aftermath of events like the floods. “And then, you know, people go back to their normal life, and that’s kind of a normal thing. But this — the damage that is out here — is going to take months, in fact years, to get back to where things feel semi-normal.”

KXAN Reporter Brianna Hollis contributed to this report.