SAN ANTONIO – It’s been days, but a major cleanup continues after a winter storm rolled through parts of the area north of Loop 1604.
One of the hardest-hit neighborhoods is in New Braunfels, south of Canyon Lake.
Neighbors who live in the Vintage Oaks subdivision off Highway 46 are leading a community effort to clean up the mess left behind.
“I’ve been here about five, six years now. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it as far as the damage,” said Emmanuel Valdez, Vintage Oaks resident.
Valdez is part of a group of volunteers picking up debris and tree limbs and taking them to a community park to conduct a controlled burn.
“We probably had three good days of just a misty ice. Sometimes you can see ice that thick, and everything started laying down. You could just come out here and listen, and you’ll hear branches just crunching and crashing. It’s been pretty crazy — the last week or so,” said Valdez.
Jim Beeman has lived in Vintage Oaks for years. His company also helped organize this effort to clean up the area by providing trucks and equipment.
“There were just tree limbs down everywhere, so we decided we would apply all of our resources, $90,000 worth of resources — vehicles, skid steer trailers — and just to come together as a family in this community to the devastation that was going on,” said Beeman with Walker Beeman Homes.
But the work is far from done. The subdivision has hundreds of homes that still need clearing.
“The brush piles are probably three football fields large. We’ll be applying the resources again this weekend to catch up. It’s certainly been appreciated, and it’s good to see everybody come together, especially all the volunteers, to come together and do this,” said Beeman.
Valdez said seeing his neighbors help out in multiple ways is rewarding.
“Everybody’s pitching in and doing as much as we can before the next freeze comes in,” said Valdez. “Some of these trees are 300 or 400 years old. My neighbors have some of those big, beautiful trees that you kind of see in this park. It’s devastating. That’s one of the reasons we moved out here, for the beauty of this area. We’ll clean up. We’ll trim up. We’ll be back at it.”
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