Drinking water, ready to eat meals being delivered to families in Guadalupe County

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today

Cindy Aguirre

(Guadalupe County) – With the lack of good drinking water still being a main concern in Guadalupe County, officials have reportedly been hard at work trying to make sure that water gets into the hands of those who need it.

Patrick Pinder, the Guadalupe County emergency management officer, says the county was thankful on Monday to have taken possession of a FEMA truck. He says the truck contained 32 pallets of MRE’s (Meal Ready to Eat).  He says all county staff members have also been hard at work ensuring bottled water to communities across the county.

“We unloaded the truck with MRE’s last night and now, we are going to start getting a plan to disseminate that. The city of Staples, we assisted them with their FEMA truck water and delivery. We took possession of some of those pallets of water that they had left over and disseminated that to the Redwood Community Center, the city of Kingsbury. (Monday), I took two more pallets of water to the city of Schertz to an apartment complex, took a pallet of water to the Schertz Fire Department. (Tuesday morning), we delivered two pallets of water to Navarro. We took one pallet of water to SCUCISD. We took a pallet of water to the city of Selma,” said Pinder.

Pinder says right now the county is working with the local cities and communities to provide a hub where they can directly assist those needing water or food.

“Once that truck and trailer get back here, it’s going to get reloaded and we are going to start making deliveries again to the areas that are in need. The plan is to take those supplies to the volunteer fire stations and then the city emergency management coordinators or the mayors, if they don’t have an emergency management coordinator will tell us where they want to take the deliveries. It will be up to those individual jurisdictions to disseminate that from that location. So, once we get our second FEMA truck in with water, we’ll have additional pallets. A FEMA truck with water carries 19 pallets. There are 84 cases on a pallet, roughly about 1,300 cases of water. On the water side, I think it’s roughly the same thing on the MRE’s. There’s 1,300 cases and there are 12 meals in a box,” said Pinder.

Guadalupe County Judge Kyle Kutscher says although the county is doing the best to distribute the items as they come in, he wants to make sure that anyone who needs assistance contact their city leaders or the county’s emergency management office.

“And again, for individuals that need assistance and I’m talking specifically about one case of water for a family member, they can contact their city if they live within the city, but they are also welcome to contact the county emergency management office, my office, the county’s judge’s office. Getting pallets of water and having donated some purchased and some brought by FEMA, Patrick as I said with his staff tirelessly been delivering water for days and days. But we have some more resources coming. So, if you need something, let us know. Like Patrick said, with county folks, we have different elected officials, and everybody is trying to pitch in but if we can follow that information through the county emergency management office, so we are not duplicating efforts, I think we’ll be as efficient as possible but there is definitely a need to have more people involved in distributing those items,” said Kutscher.

Any information on public distribution of supplies will be made available on either your respective city’s website or on the Guadalupe County website or Facebook page. To reach the Guadalupe County Emergency Management Office, call 830-303-8856.

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