‘Total destruction’: 10 still missing in Travis County, Big Sandy Creek area devastated

TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) -- The search for at least 10 people who are still missing – and the recovery effort – continues along Big Sandy Creek in Western Travis County Monday, after floods devastated the area in the early morning hours of July 5.

Volunteers gathered at Round Mountain Baptist Church at the southern tip of Leander Monday, out on ATVs and trucks passing out supplies to their neighbors.

For one of those volunteers, Justin, the effort is personal. He confirmed to KXAN that one of his friends lost his wife, daughter and son. Justin said he used to drive those kids to school.

“His boy was a really good...sweet kid. His daughter was a sweetheart too,” he said as he drove us through some of the worst destruction near the Leander side of Big Sandy Creek Monday.

Twenty minutes away, a family that narrowly escaped the flood water near Jonestown returned home for the first time – they’re down creek from the Baptist church.

The home is now moved off its foundation. Everything in it is destroyed. But the family is glad to be alive after waking up to screams – the screams of a man who worked nearby trying to alert people to rising water – and realized they needed to get out of the house.

“There's a rushing river underneath us…My house I can feel it is about to go. It's moved several feet. That tree stopped it,” Chrissy Eliashar said.

Elishar and her father, three children and one of the children's friends were all able to escape thanks to that man. Their family dogs also survived.

“We both just knew to like stay calm. Not turn crazy and just start running because we knew that we would have probably been taken away by the water,” said Daniel Polner, the 12-year-old boy who stayed with Elishar's family that night.

Now, for many in this community, all that’s left for some is gratitude that they’ve made it through an event that took the lives of so many others.

“Just have so many pictures and I'm always going to remember those faces and now I come out here and it is washed, it's gone,” Eliashar said.