CENTER POINT, Texas — When Kenny Hudnall looked out the window of his mother’s minivan Monday, he could see the destruction wrought by the floodwaters of the Guadalupe River on July 4: fat cypress trees snapped like twigs, kayaks dangling from debris piles 30 feet off the ground.

Volunteers were still working to clear the mess, many wielding chain saws. But Hudnall, a 21-year-old college student, could not join them. He was partially paralyzed in a car crash at age 5 and needs a wheelchair to move and a ventilator to breathe.

Still, he had a part to play in the rebirth of Texas Hill Country after the deadly floods of July 4 that left at least 132 dead and nearly 100 still missing. Hudnall was traveling to Camp CAMP (Children’s Association for Maximum Potential), which was improbably welcoming new campers, many with physical and cognitive challenges too serious for other camps.

“Seeing those volunteers on the road was very similar to the vibe at camp,” Hudnall said. “It’s bringing normalcy to a person who doesn’t always feel normal.”

The reopening of a summer camp Monday heralded the green shoots already sprouting in the flood’s wake, and it felt particularly poignant, and perhaps a little scary. One of the most indelible horrors of the flood was Camp Mystic, 30 miles upriver, where more than two dozen campers, counselors and other employees lost their lives.

Camp CAMP was not in session the week of July 4. Its cabins and other buildings sit on a hill 80 feet above the river anyway, safely above the flood’s high-water mark, said Brandon Briery, the chief operations officer. The camp’s undeveloped stretch of riverfront property was used by campers only sporadically for fishing, canoeing and bonfires.

“For years we had talked about building here, and I always said no,” Ken Kaiser, the facilities director, said this week as he stood on the riverbank. “Because it always floods.”

Still, flood detritus did render the waterfront impassable. The heart of the camp was unscathed, but leaders worried about exposing vulnerable campers to scenes of destruction, including search teams from Texas A&M University on the property looking for human remains.

Then unexpected help arrived. Cord Shiflet, an Austin, Texas, real estate agent who started helping with disaster relief when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017, had driven to the Hill Country looking for places to pitch in. Someone directed him to Camp CAMP. He discovered the destroyed waterfront, and the camp’s mission, helping children too disabled to attend other camps.

At 9:28 p.m. July 8, Shiflet sent a plea to his tens of thousands of Facebook followers.

“I need MONEY, MANPOWER, and MACHINES,” he wrote. “We do NOT need people in athletic shorts showing up with a rake. We need the biggest, baddest muscle we can find to work our tails off.”

On Wednesday morning, 250 people arrived at Camp CAMP. By Friday, the number of volunteers had doubled. They brought front-end loaders, excavators, dump trucks and dozens of chain saws. They hacked the tangles of debris to pieces and hauled it all away. By 5 p.m. Saturday, the waterfront was a flat expanse of fresh mud.

“I am overwhelmed,” Kaiser said as he surveyed the scene. “We thought this would take a year. They did it in four days.”

Briery sent word to campers’ parents that Camp CAMP would reopen at noon Monday.