Evansville area businesses and agencies are answering calls to help areas of Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas ravaged Sept. 26-27 by Hurricane Helene, and Florida communities battered Oct. 9-10 by Hurricane Milton.
Hereโs a look at the roles local people are playing in post-hurricane recovery, and how you can help, too.
Sixty American Red Cross volunteers from Indiana โ including 11 from Southwestern Indiana counties โ traveled to the Southeast in late September to support areas hammered by Hurricane Helene. Their duties include delivering meals, manning shelters, and providing health service assistance, says Beth Sweeney, executive director of the Red Crossโ Southwest Indiana chapter.
The volunteersโ work likely will shift to disaster assessment in Georgia, Florida, and North and South Carolina over the next several days.
How can the public help impacted regions recover? Sweeney listed three ways. One is through financial donations via the Red Cross website. Another is by donating blood. Sweeney explains that the Red Cross has had to cancel about 2,000 blood drives in the Southeast due to the hurricanes, and she notes thereโs a consistent need โ a pint of blood has only a 42-day shelf life.
Lastly, Sweeney says the Red Cross needs volunteers for disaster relief and for all its other missions.
โWe can get (new volunteers) trained,โ she says.
Another opportunity to lend a hand to hurricane victims is being offered by First Federal Savings Bank and bulk transportation company Gibco Motor Express.
The two businesses are collecting non-perishable food, bottled water, diapers, baby formula, clothing, toiletries, batteries, flashlights, blankets, pet food, and camping-related items. Donations can be brought to the First Federal Savings Bank operations center at 4920 Davis Lant Drive, near Lynch and North Green River roads, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday-Saturday.
The donation drive began Oct. 10 and found immediate success. By midday Oct. 11, one tractor-trailer was nearly full, and a second had arrived to load up weekend donations.
โWe are trying to get anything and everything,โ says Jeff Kniese, First Federal Savings Bankโs chief business development officer and senior vice president.
First Federal Savings Bank also has established a fund on behalf of Newsong Church in Cornelius, North Carolina. It is accepting monetary donations via check made payable to First Federal Savings Bank with โHurricane Reliefโ and the donorโs last name in the memo, or sent digitally using Zelle by searching donations@fbei.net.
At the end of the campaign, the money collected will be transferred to Newsong Church to provide relief in the disaster areas.
Animals are impacted by natural disasters, too, and Warrick Humane Society has taken in dogs and cats from Washington County, Tennessee, who needed to be moved to accommodate animals displaced by Hurricane Helene. Washington County is just northeast of Greeneville, Tennessee, which experienced devastating flooding during Helene.
The request for emergency animal shelters came from Best Friends Animal Society, a nationwide nonprofit.
To accommodate these new animals, the humane society sought foster care for all the local dogs and cats it had under roof โ nearly 40 of them. Supporters raced to take in those pets so the influx of new animals can be cared for by Warrick Humane Society staff as they are prepared for adoption.
โWe have never been more in need of adopters,โ says McKenzie Puckett, WHSโ communications coordinator. โThe community really came through.โ
Want to help? Puckett says donations of food are welcome, as are monetary donations to assist with the guest animalsโ medical care. Visit Warrick Humane Society’s website or its Facebook page to learn more.
CenterPoint Energy lineman crews traveled to assist with Hurricane Helene power restoration efforts about two weeks ago. They have since headed home, but the focus now has shifted further south. Additional CenterPoint workers and contractors โ including 15 from the Evansville area, and many more from Houston, Texas โ were on their way to Florida on Oct. 10 to aid restoration efforts for the more than 3 million customers left without power after Hurricane Milton made landfall late the prior evening. Power had been restored for nearly 1 million customers by midday Oct. 11, according to national power outage tracker FindEnergy.com.
Despite the companyโs commitment to mutual aid support in hurricane relief, โwe remain prepared and ready to respond to any operational needs in our electric service territories in Houston and Evansville,โ Darin Carroll, CenterPointโs senior vice president of Electric Business, said in an Oct. 10 press release.