Woman trying to connect family with photos found in Texas flood aftermath

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- A woman who's lived in Sandy Creek her whole life saw firsthand the devastation of recent floods that wrecked parts of Central Texas. She said it was "nothing explainable."

Shelby Sargent, a 24-year-old mother of a young baby girl, is trying to help the community in any way she can. She said she can't help with on-the-ground recovery efforts because she has to stay home to care for her daughter, but she still found a way to help from home.

Sargent has been sharing social media posts of photos that have been recovered in the debris and aftermath of the floods. She said her friend Dillon, who works in local emergency management, has personally pulled a lot of the photos out of the creek and storm wreckage.

The photos are being kept at Round Mountain Baptist Church, which has become a hub for disaster response efforts and a distribution center for items that flood victims can pick up. The church also set up an online giving link to assist flood victim families.

Sargent attended the church as a child and said the Sandy Creek community has always been really important to her, because it's small and "everybody knows everybody."

She was at her new home in Leander when she got a call about the flood impacts Saturday morning and she immediately went to see what she could do to help.

"As soon as I heard what happened, I just went wherever I could," she said. "I went out there and I saw the devastation, and... it's nothing explainable, that's for sure."

Sargent said a lot of first responders and "cowboys" brought photos they found during cleanup efforts to the church, and volunteers dried them out and organized them.

"We found photos as old as when photos started being created," Sargent said.

She's been sharing the photos on her Facebook page, trying to find the people they belong to, or their family members, so they can be returned.

"Somehow, I just want to reach the families of those who know that their family was affected, and those could be their photos. I really don't know what the next step would be," Sargent said. "I'm just trying to get it out there, trying to reach the families of who those [photos] belong to. Hopefully survivors at this point."

She said this effort matters to her because, "sometimes a photo is all somebody has left of somebody, so these photos are more than important to people."

"Some of them I personally know," she said. "I've been able to find photos of friends that have families out there. I knew them, knew their parents. So these photos are really sentimental."

Sargent even saw a photo that she was in. "That about did me in," she said.

"It was hard to realize that this wasn't just your neighbors, these are family members, these are friends," Sargent said. "Even if it's somebody I don't know, that's somebody's baby, I'm a mom myself... It's hard to see these families lose so much. [The photos are] all they have, so that's what we'll give them, at least."

Sargent said community members have been saying that right now, they need "bodies and chainsaws" and people who are willing to sort through brush and debris and help with the cleanup process.

"I think Windy Valley and Sandy Creek and that area needs all the help they can get, crowbars, winches, gloves, goggles, respiration masks, safety equipment to help those that are clearing and things like of that nature," Sargent said.

She also shared a few links to fundraisers for people she knows who were affected by the floods.

One fundraiser is for the family of Braxton Jarmon, an incoming sophomore at Leander High School who was an active member of the marching band and lost his life in the flooding.

Another was posted by Leander ISD Plant Services, which said one of their Grounds Leads and her family lost everything in the flood. The organization said it will directly collect and deliver donations to the family.

Sargent also passed along a GoFundMe for a family who has three young children, and also lost everything in the flood.

One GoFundMe Sargent shared is for a man who lost all of his belongings in the flood, but still managed to help rescue his brother, nieces and nephews, and neighbors when the flood hit.

Find more ways of helping those impacted by Central Texas flooding in this story.