Friends in North Austin removed downed trees from neighbors’ roofs, while closer to the city core, volunteers rushed to meet the immediate needs of people without homes — those most severely impacted by the freezing temperatures.
After an ice storm, Eric Calder and his son Thomas, 14, help move large tree limbs from a neighbors backyard in northwest Austin on Feb. 2, 2023. Calder and his son were part of a neighborhood effort to clean up their neighbors yards.
“This is the best little neighborhood in Austin,” said Eric Calder, a resident for almost two decades who spent the last two days coordinating a warming shelter and helping neighbors remove branches from their roofs amid temperatures in the high 30s. While working, a nut on the chainsaw came loose and fell off, leaving Calder and his 14-year-old son Thomas Calder with only a pole saw left to cut the fallen branches. The useless chainsaw, lying dead on the truck’s tailgate, didn’t stop the father and son’s effort to help their neighbors after the deluge of the storm had passed.
Eric and Thomas Calder speak with neighbors who have come to a neighborhood community center to charge phones and other devices. One man said he had visited earlier in the morning and had seen about 15 other people using the facility to warm up.Damaged homes and outages presented challenges for Austinites with homes, but for neighbors without access to reliable shelter, the ice storm has been much more dangerous.
“This was the trial run and we fucking failed; we flunked,” Rose said. “There’s no way that we would have been able to handle the amount of unsheltered people that are still out there.”
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