Episode 4: After the Storm
Oct 7, 2026 · 21 min · 10 segments
After headlines fade, communities must keep rebuilding. Hear how communities turn hard-won lessons into the keys to navigating the next disaster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit…
Oct 7, 2026 · 21 min · 10 segments
After headlines fade, communities must keep rebuilding. Hear how communities turn hard-won lessons into the keys to navigating the next disaster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit…
That Fourth of July 2025 became the sixth deadliest freshwater flooding event in US history, with so much rain bearing down on central Texas that the Guadalupe River rose up 30 feet in an hour.
Flash flooding caused havoc and killed 136 people, with 117 of those deaths occurring in Kerr County.
The Guadalupe River sits just several feet from the parking lot of the Kerrville Walmart where Peter works.
Luckily, the store itself narrowly avoided catastrophe, so Peter and his team put into action a disaster plan to immediately start supporting the wider community.
Before I had got there, my overnight manager and my personnel manager had already transformed our associate break room and an adjoining room into a relief center for those who turned up to the store.
'Cause I mean, the, these people were turning up to the store in their pajamas, you know, just whatever they were wearing and to get out.
They were in pajamas, hadn't ate, were freezing cold 'cause it's pouring rain, and they, they had escaped the house.
And the great part of running a store that has everything is, well, we got everything.
As we've heard throughout this series, it was the lessons Peter learned on blue sky days that helped him kick into high gear when faced with disaster.
You come in on the day after Halloween, and it's like Halloween never happened.
We're really good at transforming a building from one holiday into the next.
So we just took the same approach, like, "Look, we're not celebrating a normal Fourth of July.
We're taking care of the people here." The celebration went away, and the critical supplies went out and covered our aisles.
Everyone who supplies the store was able to bring all the supplies we needed and start helping us distribute those supplies, primarily through the Salvation Army, but we were able to supply to a lot of organizations in town, the local food banks, local churches who were setting up shelters.
I mean, we really became the focal point for being able to provide those first immediate supplies that everybody needed.
Peter and his team were also focused on making sure their associates were okay.
When no one could get hold of one associate, Peter began to fear for her safety.
That Fourth of July 2025 became the sixth deadliest freshwater flooding event in US history, with so much rain bearing down on central Texas that the Guadalupe River rose up 30 feet in an hour.
Flash flooding caused havoc and killed 136 people, with 117 of those deaths occurring in Kerr County.
The Guadalupe River sits just several feet from the parking lot of the Kerrville Walmart where Peter works.
Luckily, the store itself narrowly avoided catastrophe, so Peter and his team put into action a disaster plan to immediately start supporting the wider community.
Before I had got there, my overnight manager and my personnel manager had already transformed our associate break room and an adjoining room into a relief center for those who turned up to the store.
'Cause I mean, the, these people were turning up to the store in their pajamas, you know, just whatever they were wearing and to get out.
They were in pajamas, hadn't ate, were freezing cold 'cause it's pouring rain, and they, they had escaped the house.
And the great part of running a store that has everything is, well, we got everything.
As we've heard throughout this series, it was the lessons Peter learned on blue sky days that helped him kick into high gear when faced with disaster.
You come in on the day after Halloween, and it's like Halloween never happened.
We're really good at transforming a building from one holiday into the next.
So we just took the same approach, like, "Look, we're not celebrating a normal Fourth of July.
We're taking care of the people here." The celebration went away, and the critical supplies went out and covered our aisles.
Everyone who supplies the store was able to bring all the supplies we needed and start helping us distribute those supplies, primarily through the Salvation Army, but we were able to supply to a lot of organizations in town, the local food banks, local churches who were setting up shelters.
I mean, we really became the focal point for being able to provide those first immediate supplies that everybody needed.
Peter and his team were also focused on making sure their associates were okay.
When no one could get hold of one associate, Peter began to fear for her safety.
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