We started the day with worship at the Oak Mountain Church of Christ and then headed out to work with the Disaster Assistance CoC (Church of Christ) group in Tuscaloosa. We were really excited to start helping but nothing prepared us for what we found when we arrived on site.
As we drove in on the highway from Birmingham, there were areas of downed trees and blown over road signs but nothing that we hadn’t seen before…even from Hurricane Ike when it blew thru Greater Cincinnati. When we turned off the exit and headed toward the University of Alabama campus, things still looked fairly normal. However, about a mile off of the highway and we could see the affected areas off on the horizon.
The group we helped with is setup in the parking lot of the Central Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa…in front of where the church building USED to be. The devastation in the blocks surrounding the church was incredible and left us heart-broken. Literally, it looks like a bomb went off. This group is a disaster response team, supported by several different Church of Christ congregations, and shows up in a 5th wheel camper towing a trailer full of gear. They come to cook and feed as many people as possible as quickly as possible. They have been serving upwards of 3000 daily meals to folks in the surrounding area.
They had just started taking physical donations and getting them organized when we arrived so we gave them ALL of the items that you all were so kind to supply us with. The folks were just amazed that we had traveled all the way from Indiana with donations for them.
Once we got the truck unloaded, we went to work delivering meals to anyone we could find that needed something to eat or drink. We were blown away by what we saw as we traveled around and the destruction that had been caused. People were trying to reclaim what they could out of piles of rubble, people were trying to gather pets left behind, and everyone was trying to clear debris just so vehicles could make their way around. We found people who had no power, no water, no car to get around…but everyone was so grateful to get even a little help like a bagged meal and some bottled water.
We will post some pictures but, to give you some perspective…the old AND new offices of the Salvation Army were destroyed; the Red Cross office was terribly damaged; the local National Guard Post was destroyed as well with large trucks and equipment just tossed upside down in their parking lots. Then less than a mile away, there was a BW3 in perfect condition serving chicken wings.
So, we got back to the campsite and crashed. All in all a good day but very humbling.
I almost forgot...
ReplyDeleteWe ran into more folks from Indiana and Ohio. Church groups who had come down to aid in the cleanup. And there was a lot to be cleaned up...so many trees, limbs, and assorted debris. They are all being moved out of the streets and yards into the 15 foot easement along the curbs for the city workers to pickup and remove. What a huge task it is that lays ahead of them.
We were also really moved by a cleanup worker who got some our sandwiches and before we could leave pointed us to a house across the street that had a large group of people working behind the house in the back yard. We would have missed them completely had he not thought of them and pushed us in their direction. Needless to say, they were very grateful as well.