Volunteers help get West Austin Preschool back up and running after flood

Dozens of kids will be getting back to normal come Monday morning after their school in West Austin was flooded in May.

Larry Elsner is the Executive Director for Open Door Preschools, he said when he got the call that one of his schools had flooded because of a sewage line backup, he thought it was just something they would be able to mop up and be back in business the next day. But that wasn't the case. “Because of the nature of the water, it became much more complicated than we could have imagined,” he said.

Everything needed to be checked for mold, so they had to take out walls, re-sheet rock and repaint everything, as well as throw away a lot of damaged furniture and supplies. More than 70 children were displaced.  Church of the Good Shepard has been letting the kids use their building on a temporary basis.

But this weekend, dozens of volunteers spent their Saturday lending a helping hand to the preschool.  Molly Hahm works for Hand on Central Texas. “We really believe that that's everyone's job to pitch in and be part of the community, so we love to have people come out and help awesome organizations like Open Door Preschool. They obviously don't have a lot of staff. They're staff are all teachers and the center director, have those extra hands come in and be a part of making a great place for little learners that are babies all the way up to preschool.”

Elsner said he didn't think they would be able to pull it off as the school looked like a disaster area early Saturday morning. But everyone worked together and made it happen.  “You thought, there's no way that we can open on Monday, but easily we will.  Everything will be back to normal on Monday and everybody is happy about that.”

For more information on Hand on Central Texas, you can click here.