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Willie Piña: "I live in Tahitian Village which was impacted by the fire. My house survived--the
fire went around the house. My neighbor's house didn't survive.
Todd McClanahan: "It's absolutely affected us. My house is saved, but my home is lost.
This is my home, you know. My home is Bastrop.
Rita Levermann: "So I picked up the phone and called 9-1-1 and the lady got all excited
when I told her where I was she said "You need to get out! You need to get out!"
Todd McClanahan: "It was so dry, as soon as it hit it would just ignite. So that's when
we needed to get back to the park and evacuate. It was a holiday weekend, you know, Labor
Day weekend so we quite a few campers to get evacuated... The park is 6,500 acres and we're
estimating about 95% of the park has been burned.
Willie Piña: "It's a large area. We had firefighters from all over the united states to help us
with the fire... First thing we had to do was evacuate 19, actually 20 subdivisions.
We're at 95% contained so now we're already starting the recovery phase."
Mary Ragland: "As we were having our discussion, we decided that we wanted to come over and
let you know how concerned we are for all of you. We have approximately 1,000 members
in our AARP chapters who would be willing to provide assistance if we can identify what
assistance you need."
Todd McClanahan: "We've been--I mean the outpouring of support has just been tremendous from people,
you know. They want to come and they want to get hands on and help plant trees and rebuild
trails and quite frankly, monetary donations are the best thing because we're so early
in the assessment mode of trying to figure out what's going to be the long term plan.
And it's going to be a long time before we're ready to start planting trees, so those monetary
donations can go to help fund some of that."
Willie Piña: "It's one of those things that you never know why but, when it happens we
pray every day that things will get better."
Rita Levermann: "What's next is not to leave Bastrop, I can tell you that. We're going
to stay here... Let me tell you something, we're blessed. We got all of our animals out,
got a roof over our head..."
Todd McClanahan: "I have two boys six and eight, and I definitely hope I can bring them
back in ten to fifteen years and see that it's recovering. That would make me extremely
proud."