One of the largest crowds to ever enjoy the Sisterdale Volunteer Fire Department annual BBQ Dinner and Dance turned out Saturday for the VFD’s renamed and refocused flood relief fundraiser.
Brian Reilly, Sisterdale VFD fire chief, said the annual fundraiser for the station became a fundraiser for the flood-ravaged community.
“Coming right on the heels of the flood, and given the support we had through that, we just didn’t feel right asking for more for ourselves,” Reilly said. “We turned it in to a benefit for families that were destroyed by this.”
The event, he said, pre-dates the creation of the fire department. But once the VFD was up and running, it began using the event as a money-making tool to meet the department’s most pressing needs over the years.
“August is that time of year when it’s too hot to farm, too hot to do much of anything, so they’d get together, barbecue meat and drink beer and wait for the heat to pass,” Reilly said.
“When the fire department was created, it took that over and it became a fundraiser for us, every second Saturday of August,” he added.
Beneficiaries of all the proceeds from the barbecue and dance are CAMP (Children’s Association for Maximum Potential) Camp, near Center Point, and The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country.
“I think they’re a good outlet for this,” he said. “They seem to be very diligent and very careful about making sure that it’s used in ways that will have a lasting impact for people that need this.”
The Sisterdale station became the county emergency response center once the floodwaters moved along the Guadalupe and out of the Comfort area.
“The first couple of days it was in Comfort. We sent two search crews to Comfort both of those days and they made some recoveries,” he said. “As it (the floodwaters) moved, we need to keep moving downriver, so we became the county command post for the rest of it.”
Floodwaters came over the Sisterdale Road bridge, about 1.5 miles from the station.
“We were down at the bridge when the flood came and closed the bridge when water actually came over the bridge,” he said. “That’s a little more than 40 feet higher than normal. But to get to 40 feet, it was almost a half-mile wide. It was all the way, completely out of the banks on both sides,” he added.
He said all the notoriety Sisterdale received put them in the public spotlight, so to speak, so when the barbecue and dinner came up, they did what they felt natural and turned their attention to those less fortunate.
He called the turnout “phenomenal.”
“We doubled the food, we doubled the tables and we still ran out of space for everybody,” he said.
At the same time, he and his crew of 31 fire-fighting volunteers understand the task ahead.
“When this all moves out of the news, there are still families that have to rebuild and homes that were lost,” he said. “That’s why we’re doing this.”
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