MISSISSIPPI -Tennesseans like to call themselves “the volunteers” but in our Mississippi tornado disaster, folks from Texas are playing a prominent role.
Trucks for “Minuteman Disaster Response” of McKinney, Texas head toward Amory, Mississippi, still recovering from the powerful punch of last week’s tornadoes.
A look aT the damage to Amory High School as it happened, can give you a hint of the damage that stretches for hundreds of miles.
“It is months’ worth of recovery here. Just everywhere you go, it’s just devastation, explained Andy Rogen with the Minutemen.
He has a base camp in Amory and is coordinating with emergency response teams. He expects at least two dozen volunteers to join him in the coming days… and they all could spend weeks moving mountains of debris and helping Mississppi recover.
“We’ll have chainsaw crews going we’ll have people pulling behind those chainsaw crews. We’re bringing in the skid steer tractors with these grapple hooks to be able to move this stuff,” said Rogen.
The Minutemen aren’t the only Texas team to come to Mississippi’s rescue, helping many homeowners clean up…. and helping others start over.
“Teams such as Texas Baptist, Men’s team will come in and just scrape the entire house right off the off the foundation. People will start from that foundation if they’re returning it all,” said John Hall of the Texas Baptist Men’s Team.
The team from Texas Baptist men includes chapins for what Hall calls, an inevitable wave of grief he believes will hit for some as the recovery gets underway, under storm clouds that threaten even more severe weather by the end of the week.
“Together, we can make it and so the folks who are Texas can make a difference here financially, they can make a different difference by volunteering. We can all work together for the betterment of these
communities,” said Hall.
KTVT, Fort Worth and WCBI, Columbus provided the bulk of material for this story.
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