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Communities and major industries in Central Texas were recently hit hard by deadly flash flooding. As the area starts working to recover from the disaster, the local business community and others have been turning out to help.
Areas in Central Texas faced severe flooding during the long Fourth of July holiday weekend, which was brought on by heavy rainfall, devastating residents and businesses alike. At least 119 people have died.
AccuWeather reported Monday that the damage and resulting economic loss from the flooding could be in the $18-22 billion range overall.
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The camping industry is a major industry in Kerrville and is one of the sectors that has been affected by the flooding.
Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Mindy Wendele told “The Claman Countdown” host Liz Claman that the economic impact of the camping industry “is significant with over $40 million in annual direct impact.”
“They are a generator that is such a wonderful, 100-year-old history of our industry here in the Texas Hill Country and Kerr County,” she said. “And you take that out of our economy and, obviously, there is definitely an impact.”
Kerr County’s top industry is tourism, according to Wendele.
“We employ over 1,100 folks in that industry and, as you can imagine, now that we have this devastation in our area, it’s going to impact a lot of people,” she told Claman. “And those are direct impacts, obviously. Then we have the families that are part of those 1,100 plus people.”
Wendele said business and community leaders are “out on the streets right now” and are “inventorying and surveying” businesses “as they can to see what their needs are” in the wake of the flooding.
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People from various professions and small business owners have been turning out to help impacted communities, according to the Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce CEO.
“We had a roomful of people in my building yesterday that have completely taken off to come help people, seriously, everything from dog food to chainsaws to mucking out kitchens so that these restaurants and resorts can open,” she added.
The Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce created a “Rebuilding and Recovery Fund” this week to help businesses with their recovery efforts that people have made donations to. It received authorization to start sending out funds on Wednesday morning, according to Wendele.
“This time last week, none of us thought we would be in this situation,” she said. “But here we are, and we are all really joining hands and working very hard. The business community takes care of the community.”
Companies like Home Depot, Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Apple, Airbnb and Lowe’s have also been providing aid to impacted Texas communities. Raising Cane’s, the fast food restaurant that specializes in chicken fingers, recently announced, via its founder Todd Graves, it was making a $1 million donation to the Red Cross to assist with the devastation.
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Wendele said “we are so grateful” for the support from corporations like those.
Claman asked her what Texans impacted by the flooding need most besides money.
“We need prayers and we need gift cards, and probably in that order,” Wendele said, noting the Chamber has set up a system for “categorizing those gift cards so that we can hand those out to folks for immediate help.”
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