Local residents to provide hurricane relief

By CHARLES W. JOHNSON News Editor for the Southern

Warren County citizens have watched in horror, along with the rest of the country, as a series of devastating hurricanes have pounded our coastal states, causing tremendous damage and resulting in the loss of human life. Many have expressed their concern and desire to help, and some, like River Park nurse Wanda Hart and Triangle Nursery’s Ricky Minton, have even volunteered to personally go into some of the hardest hit areas and provide what relief they can to those affected by one of the worst tropical storm seasons in recent memory.

Hart says she signed on after seeing flyers at River Park where the hospital’s parent corporation, HCA, was asking for volunteers to relieve exhausted health care workers in the company’s facilities in Florida. Hart was originally scheduled to leave yesterday, but with the advent of the most recent storm, Ivan, her departure was moved up to last Thursday night. She wasn’t sure exactly where she would be going or what function she would be asked to perform, but had been told she would be flying into Sarasota, Fla.
“Then they’re going to take us by bus somewhere,” Hart said, noting the destruction of one of the bridges in the area could limit where the relief group would go.

Hart said she made the decision to go because of her desire to help.

“I just wanted to go,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to go and help in a crisis situation.”

Hart, who has worked at the hospital for eight years, will be the only employee from River Park making the trip, and she hopes she will be able to provide some much needed rest for hospital personnel who have been working long hours.

“I think the people who are there have been working 16 hour shifts and couldn’t go home,” she said.

Hart said these kinds of disasters shows up the current shortage of nursing personnel.

“There’s such a demand already for nurses,” she said, “so it just puts extra stress on the nurses that are already there working. They’re probably working a lot of overtime. It puts a lot of stress on the whole system. You’ve got communities that are losing hospitals, so it’s going to impact in that way also.”

Minton said he got involved through his church.

“I’m going to be on a relief team with the Tennessee Baptist Convention,” Minton said on Friday. “It looks like now it’s probably be Sunday before we leave. We’re taking a kitchen down to set up, a kitchen that serves something like 17,000 meals at a sitting, or something like that.”

Like Hart, Minton, who attends First Baptist Church here in McMinnville, isn’t sure where he will be going.