Locals lend helping hand to Katrina victims
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It has left many concerned citizens wondering what they can do to help, and the situation is no different right here in Warren County. The local chapter of the Red Cross is being inundated with so many calls offering aid that director Kathy Nesmith says she is considering adding a second line, at least temporarily.
Nesmith said she realizes people want to send supplies directly, but notes it will be difficult for individuals or local organizations to actually get those items into the areas, most of which are closed to incoming traffic. She wants to inform people the best way to help is to provide funds to recognized national disaster organizations like the Red Cross.
“The national Red Cross is down there and they have shelters set up all over Alabama, upper Mississippi and upper Louisiana,” Nesmith said. “They are sheltering and feeding these people right now, and will be for a long time.”
Nesmith suggests that local people who want to help should instead organize fund-raisers and funnel the money through the local chapter of the Red Cross.
“Red Cross disaster relief needs funds,” Nesmith said, “for the victims down there and the help that is going to be provided for them. It would help tremendously if they would do fund-raising for disaster relief. Any fund-raisers they would like to do would be appreciated.”
The Red Cross is doing some disaster relief work locally, though, according to Nesmith.
“The chapter is in the process of helping the evacuees that have migrated up this way,” Nesmith said. “We’re helping them with what their needs are, and that’s going to be food and clothes.”
But Nesmith said, at least at present, not to bring donations of food or clothing to the local chapter.
“It takes too much manpower to take canned goods or clothes,” Nesmith said. “And then we would have to have a place to store it and we’re using every available space to shelter these people, so we don’t have the space to house items that can’t be used immediately.”
Nesmith said yesterday there are currently four families in the area, and though they all now have shelter, they have little else. Still, Nesmith asks that people contact the Red Cross before bringing in any items due to space considerations.
There are also those in the county whose lives have been personally touched by Katrina’s fury, like Daughn Baines, whose son, 2002 Boyd Christian graduate Corey Beets, is an airman stationed at Keefler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. Baines says she is anxious to help and is working with the Red Cross to do so, since there is little else she can do at present.
“I’ve been informed I cannot get down there to my son,” Baines said. “So I’m not very happy. I’m trying to figure out some things that I might could get started here.”
Baines said she is working with the Red Cross, Three Star Mall and her younger son Zach’s Boy Scout troop, Troop 309, to set up on the mall center stage all day Monday, Sept. 5, where troop members will be collecting paper towels, paper plates and cups, soap, baby wipes, diapers for Tennessee shelters, and monetary donations for disaster relief.
Baines said most of the airmen at the base stayed out the storm in a bomb shelter on the base.
“Most of the boys have been shipped out,” Barnes said yesterday,” except my son, and I knew he would do this, who is one of 125 boys who are staying for the cleanup. He’ll be there for three months.”
County Executive Kenneth Rogers says the county has been contacted by Tennessee EMS for information as to what could be sent if needed, and as a result he called a special meeting of the Safety Committee on Wednesday night.
“We met and we agreed we have the command post, and we’re going to mobilize that to them if they need it,” Rogers said of the large recreational-type vehicle the county owns. “And at least one ambulance if not more, and we’ve got a trailer full of first-aid supplies we got through Homeland Security and we’re going to take it down there if they call us, plus personnel.”