Sandy Creek resident Georgia Bishop was out of town for a concert when 22 inches of rain fell on parts of northwest Travis County over the July 4, 2025, weekend. When Bishop returned home days later, her community was significantly changed.
Residents of the hard-hit Sandy Creek neighborhood described a “wall of water” that tore through their community last July, washing away homes, cars and roads. Nine people died in the flooding, including Bishop’s best friend, 16-year-old Felicity Jarmon.
Bishop described her friend as a talented artist and a kindhearted person who loved animals and enjoyed playing video games.
“She was super funny,” Bishop said. “She had a really good sense of humor—I could literally call her crying, and then I would hang up the phone laughing.”
Bishop said that Felicity had “a really tight bond” with her younger brother, Braxton. The two siblings were in their Sandy Creek home with their father, Jermaine Jarmon, and their stepmother, Alissa Martin, when the house was swept away by floodwaters on July 5, 2025. Only Jermaine survived.
What’s happening
One year later, residents of the unincorporated Travis County community are still working to rebuild from last July’s catastrophic flooding. Bishop and her mother, Amanda Ward, are renting a house after the storm damaged their roof and caused parts of their home to be covered in “a literal blanket of mold.” Ashlee Willis and Brandy Gerstner are living in mobile homes, they told Community Impact, and Jermaine Jarmon also lives in a camper, Bishop said.
Central Texas has seen two straight years of intense, deadly flooding in July, leaving some residents on edge as they recover from last year’s disaster and mourn lost loved ones.
Fifty-seven percent of Central Texas flood survivors reported that after last year's storms, they began feeling anxiety, fear or stress during other bad weather. Twenty percent of flood survivors were still displaced and living in temporary housing, while about 65% said they knew people who were still struggling emotionally or financially, according to a survey conducted in May and June by Extreme Weather Survivors, a national organization designed to bring together people who have been affected by natural disasters and help them advocate for change.
Residents of communities that flooded spoke of limited support from local and state officials, noting that they relied on their neighbors and outside organizations, rather than the government, for support after last year’s disaster.
“When the flood happened, it was my neighbors who were checking on each other and pulling each other out from their homes,” said Kylie Nidever, whose neighborhood along the Guadalupe River in Hunt flooded last year. “In the days and weeks that followed, being out in the neighborhood, I never saw firsthand any government officials, with the exception of someone from the [Texas] Department of Wildlife, who came in one evening and was measuring the water lines on the exteriors of everyone's houses.”
Nidever’s home was not damaged by the July 4, 2025, flood, which killed 119 people in Kerr County. She told Community Impact that her experience helping her neighbors rebuild motivated her to advocate for her community at the state and national levels.
