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Good: Samaritans Purse is #1. Head and shoulders above the rest. They arrived in town two days after the tornado and crews are still here. They work hard, are very respectful, and did I say that they work hard while seeming to have a good time. Attitude us everything. The Mennonites also showed up a couple days after the event and are still working. They are a smaller group, not as obvious, and worked mainly on getting damaged homes livable and still have a smaller presence here. Bread of Life is a local charity. They are a smaller group but have done amazing work. Their distribution efforts were better organized than anybody else's. If you search Bread of Life several groups will come up but the local one is a Church of Christ group located in Graves County. They were literally first on the scene in events that took place within a hundred miles of here before the December tornado. All of these are groups that are affiliated with religious organizations and use volunteers and donations.
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This was my experience after Hurricane Floyd. I don't know where the Mennonites came from, I did find out years later, they do have a community in the NC mountains, but they were on the ground working before the flood waters had receded. They impressed the heck out of me. The Baptists were also in the flooded out areas early. The Mennonites came in with their people, hand tools and that was it but very welcome. The Baptists did the same but they also had a semi trailer that as a combination kitchen and bathhouse. Both groups were in it for the long haul.
As the flood was receding, the Mennonites were starting to work already gathering and sorting supplies for the local people. The NC National Guard was in town with a mobile kitchen feeding locals and volunteers. You needed food, you got it. The Red Cross was driving around in panel truck handing out foam containers of pasta. A week or two later I want back to help with the clean up and the National Guard and Red Cross was gone. The Mennonites were still there and the Baptists had joined them. They were there for the long haul and were helping clean out flood damaged houses, strip the walls and floors to the studs/joist and rebuild.
Years after Floyd, a storm front went through dropping tornadoes here and there. On tornado hit a three homes, one of which was a family member of a coworker. The coworker's family member was killed as was one of their neighbors. We went to help clean up and save what could be saved. Not much was worth saving but we were there mostly to show support to the family. For them, just having a bunch of strangers show up, to go through the rubble pile and find photos and such was a great help to them. I found a photo from one of the other houses that was destroyed, and a man killed, that was hundreds of yards away from us. The photo was in a field that I somehow saw and I took it to the other family. The photo was one of the few images they had of another family member that had died years before. I did many things that day that made the trip and work worth the effort, but finding that photo in the middle of a field was made the whole effort worth while. It was like finding a big pot of gold. The family cried when I walked up with that photo. Now, the point of this story is that there was no national organization out there helping. None. Zippo. Nobody was there be locals or people who knew the families affected. However, the next day, a bus load or two of people were trying down from VA to help clean up. I don't know why the church was sending people but they were.
The irony is that if the tornado had been a hundred yards or so east or west, it would have missed those three homes...
We had a TBN discussion years ago on where to donate money. What I took from that discussion, and my experience, is to give as local as one can.
Later,
Dan
