How Some in San Angelo are Assisting North Texas Tornado Victims

On the night after Christmas, as San Angelo residents awaited the cold front that would bring snow, people in the Dallas and North Texas areas got slammed with tornadoes that left 11 people dead and many areas overwhelmed with destruction.

Over the next few days, media sites reported on the destruction and chaos, but for one McKinney resident, Kelly Self who happens to be a San Angelo native, and a resident of San Angelo, Jennifer Slatter, who was motivated to help out, the state of the affected areas go beyond what the media and images have portrayed.

Kelly said, “I’ve been through hurricanes. I’ve been through war-torn areas from my military background. [It was] heartwrenching. The first neighborhood I stepped into brought tears to my eyes because of the humanity aspect of it,” he said choking as he remembered. “It’s even hard talking about it."

(Photo courtesy of Kelly Self)

Kelly grew up in San Angelo, but he left when he went away to the Navy in the late 1980s. He now lives in McKinney, Texas; however, when he came across Jennifer this past weekend, an old classmate who was compelled to help out after tragedy struck on Dec. 26, he felt tears come to his eyes. Not only did he reconnect with Jennifer, whom he hasn’t seen since 1988, but he also came across another classmate who lives in the Dallas area, Jason Lowe.

Both Jason and Kelly teamed up after 25 years, and they ran into Jennifer while serving a common purpose: to help with the tornado aftermath that destroyed neighborhoods in places like Rowlett and Garland, Texas, and has cost people their livelihoods.

These residents are having to grieve for the loss of their homes, and they also have had to witness both the beauty and evil of people in such trying times.

A Call to Help

Kelly said when the massive storm system hit the area, he was at home with his youngest son.

“We had just heavy rain and wind up where we’re at,” he recalled of that night.

Unfortunately, for Kelly’s friend, he wasn’t so lucky.

Kelly said the morning after the storm, his friend called to ask if he could go help him out with the damage to his home.

“That was an understatement,” stated Kelly. “He had lost his home all together."

His friend’s home, which was a two-story, was demolished. Luckily, his friend wasn’t home that evening, so there were no injuries.

“I helped him out the best I could that day," Kelly noted.

(Photo courtesy of Kelly Self)

It was that moment that called Kelly to go out and help other victims.

“I got up, called into work, and said, ‘I can’t work today,” the San Angelo native proclaimed. “’I gotta see what I can do to help these people.’”

After he got off the phone, Kelly went to the grocery store, loaded up his vehicle with water, dog food, and other supplies and headed east toward a rural town called Farmersville.

Kelly stated that he stopped by the First Baptist Church there and asked what he could do.

He explained, “They gave me an address, and I went out to a very rural area. I pulled up to the first house I could find. There was an older gentleman and another guy out there doing some clean up. I jumped out and said, ‘Can I help?’ He was very shell shocked."

The man was in shock because the only thing left of his property was a gun safe. Everything else included piles of debris.

“It just kind of went from there,” Kelly said about his need to help. “I reached out to a friend of mind; his name is Jason Lowe. He’s very connected with victim relief and disaster response through the organizations he works with, and asked him could I team up with him and what could [I] do to help."

From that point, the old friends spent all of last week and this past weekend going out to all the areas they could find that needed immediate help, including Rowlett.

Rowlett and Garland were two areas that received extensive damage.

“It’s right off of the lake, and it looks like a nuclear bomb went off there,” Kelly described.

While there, Kelly and Jason did their best to help in the cleanup efforts and console the residents, who were extremely helpful.

One of the residents in the town was driving around in a golf cart with gloves on and water for the volunteers, Kelly said.

He stated, “I asked her, ‘Ma’am, do you live in this neighborhood?’ She said ‘yes’ and pointed. ‘That’s my house over there.’ It was one of them that was just gone. It was demolished. I then asked her how she was doing, and she just kind of froze up and looked at me; and I said, ‘You need anything?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ I know one thing you need; you need a hug. So I hugged her and she cried on my shoulder for a solid three or four minutes before she could actually talk."

Overall, Kelly said the people, even today, are overwhelmed.

“It’s like the grieving process,” he explained.

He said first people were in shock, and then there’s acceptance, and today, more than a week later, people are feeling grief.

Kelly added that the pictures don’t even begin to show the reality of the destruction.

The Evil of Mankind

Sadly, people are not just dealing with the loss of their homes, but they’re having to also defend what’s left from looters.

After the initial storm that night, Kelly said some home owners in the area, which is on the lake and a very nice neighborhood, told him that before the sun came up, people were coming across in boats and rifling through people’s houses.

“What could they possibly be looking for?” one man had asked Kelly.

He said the looters looked for jewelry, firearms, and anything small that they could make a quick dollar on.

In other rural areas, where some minorities, who don’t want to draw attention to themselves, are suffering from people going into their neighborhoods and stealing their truck and trailers right out of their driveways.

It’s gotten so bad, that people are taking shifts to patrol the neighborhoods because, as soon as it gets dark, the truck trailers are pulling in, and people are either grabbing metal, or digging through the residents’ stuff.

“They’re all over the place,” Kelly said. “It’s a heartless, scum-of-the-earth action over there."

He added that some residents are putting up signs that say, “Home owner armed! Stay out!"

(Photo courtesy of Kelly Self)

Kelly indicated that area law enforcement agencies are doing their best to patrol the areas, but they are stretched thin.

“They’re doing everything they can to patrol the neighborhoods, block roads, but there’s only so much they can do,” he claimed. “There’s only so many cars and so many officers."

Thus, the citizens are taking it upon themselves to guard their neighborhoods, or volunteers are coming in to help.

Kelly said he’s also worried about the people who will come out to these areas and start taking advantage of people. There was a gentleman who came out with a work crew and charged a woman $2,500 to cut trees out of her yard.

“The police escorted him out of the county,” Kelly stated. “That’s bloodletting is what that is."

Overall, there are four types of people out in the destroyed areas: the people who want to sight see and take pictures, the ones who want to scope out the areas to loot, volunteers who want to help, and the residents themselves.

The Reunion of Friends

Kelly said last weekend when he and Jason pulled into Church in The City in Rowlett, a main command center for volunteers, the two men got a nice surprise.

Kelly stated, “We pulled into there, and the very first thing we saw, and it brought tears to my eyes, was a trailer backed up to the door looking to donate three trailers of stuff, and all the windows [showed they] were from San Angelo."

That’s when they ran into Jennifer, who had pulled one of the trailers.

“I haven’t seen her in more decades that I don’t want to count,” Kelly noted. “She was driven just like the rest of us to help. They brought food; they brought water; they brought clothes; they brought anything they could load up in those trailers and brought it out there.”

As for Jennifer, she too was happy to see her classmates and to help out people in their time of need.

The San Angelo resident said she was prompted to help with the efforts after seeing a Facebook post by a group of people in San Angelo who got U-Haul trailers to fill with donated items. Jennifer said she spoke to a woman named Autumn, and she helped them out by creating a Facebook Page (click here), making trips to Ballinger to the antique store because the owner donated a lot of items, and by pulling a trailer to the affected areas.

(Photo courtesy of Kelly Self)

“I went over there and I delivered,” she said.

Jennifer added that a company on 19th Street, Elite, donated a closed-in trailer, and she and her “better half” carried all the water, canned goods, and other items, light fixtures, clothes, and more to Rowlett.

“We made sure there was enough to get around,” she said. “It was an experience to go see."

Jennifer stated when she and her husband first got there, the side of town they entered didn’t appear as damaged, but when they turned a corner, everything changed.

 “You just wanted to cry,” she recalled. “There were so many houses down and families who had nothing. There was just nothing there. It was an experience."

She said in spite of the destruction, she enjoyed the surprise of seeing her old friends.

“It was awesome to see Jason and Kelly. We were old school mates,” she said. “That was really really awesome."

Jennifer noted that she and Jason attended McGill, Lee and Central together, and Kelly joined them at Central. They used to hang out at the old skating rink as well.

She said, “We reunited back together is what we did. It was neat."

She also reiterated that to contribute was a great experience.

“It made me feel really good,” Jennifer claimed. “I do what I can for some of the people here in San Angelo who are in need a lot, but it really felt great going somewhere besides our hometown to help another town out. You know if it happened to us, hopefully other towns would step up and help us. God didn’t put us on this earth not to help other people. He put us on this earth to help others in need."

The San Angelo resident said her hometown didn’t let her down.

“I was really amazed how many people in San Angelo stood up and helped,” she said.

Jennifer stated in addition to Elite providing a trailer, the antique store in Ballinger, U-Haul, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, Lowe’s, H-E-B, Power Sports and others donated water, $100 of gift cards for their fuel, food, totes for groceries, and many individuals kept showing up through last Friday evening to donate items. The Slatters left at 5 a.m. Saturday morning to take the items.

The Cleanup is Far from Over

Both Kelly and Jennifer said the job of volunteerism is far from over, the people of San Angelo can still help.

Kelly said, “This is going to be months getting this cleaned up. They estimated a minimum of 10 weeks on the cleanup effort itself. Every area has its own issues."

Some of the things he mentioned could help with the process are big construction bins, storage pods, financial help, storage containers, dumpsters, diesel generated construction lights, and dry trucks. He also needs a refrigerated trailer of some sort to hold food. At this time, volunteers are throwing bulks of food away because they have no place to store it.

As for Jennifer, she said she’s hoping to get crews with experience in San Angelo to help with cleanup efforts and to help people get their homes back together.

If people are interested in this effort, they can call her at (325)226-6101.