LIMESTONE AND FREESTONE COUNTIES — Think about it for a moment, in our recent snow and ice storm, would you really have wanted to be in any other state?
Texas is beginning to recover quickly thanks to people pitching in. ”I felt the need to help,” said Tim Rainey of Supreme Roofing.
Through a professional group, he managed to get several pallets of bottled water for his town from America's biggest retailer.
”They called Walmart and Walmart said, 'yes, absolutely'. It was awesome," he explained.
In cities across Texas, as the ice melted and roads started to clear, many of u it would take time to fix all these problems, and in a lot of cases that meant almost everybody had to go without.
Even water plants like Bistone water had trouble keeping up partly due to increasing demand, partly to the busted pipes. A "cascade effect" caused troubles up and down the line.
”The electrical outage caused our source of supply to lose power, then we ran out of water, and then everyone worked through the night. Two nights in a row, to try and get the water back going, we gave it a shot. We couldn't keep up with the demand," said Eric Garretty, Mexia City Manager.
Water distribution points popped up everywhere. Mexia's City Manager and Police Department manned this water station, but say other city workers got there when the tanks ran dry in Mexia.
It was folks from the Public Works Department and the Water Department that made sure this town didn't go completely dry.
Limestone County Judge Richard Duncan won wide recognition for taking charge of getting supplies to communities in need and in this disaster. Every community had needs. He credits, those who stepped up.
"We would need at least an hour to go over everyone that worked on this, it was so many people that came out, said Judge Duncan. But what the county can do and what business can donate, has limits, leaving cities in a race against time to get repairs made quickly."
"There's a lot of leaks, particularly at residential homes right so what happens is you can turn the water on and have it on but then it's leaking out so in a lot of places you have to have to shut those meters off," said Garretty.
And as boil water notices begin to disappear, along with these water stations, Tim Rainey says he's glad to pay it forward while others payback.
”Usually we're helping Walmart out of a jam with their roof blowing off in a disaster. Yeah, well now this was a flip they come and helped us it was awesome they were terrific," said Rainey
He says it's terrific to see, not only the thaw in the weather, but another more important one between governments, businesses and even neighbors as we all once again find common cause and helped each other out.
