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Help where you can

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The winds blew strongly, some trees crackled as the broke while other simply bent with the wind.

Around us houses were lifted off their foundations and some where obliterated into a pile of rubble or every stick that made them up was simply carried away in the wind.

These were some of my memories of living through a tornado 14 years ago that impacted 600 homes destroying many and many businesses in my home town. The coming weeks and months while serving in rescue, relief and rebuilding were an unbelievable experience that I would not wish to live again.

In the process of doing those efforts, rescue and relief workers develop their own type of post traumatic stress disorder. This doesn’t become apparent in many until after all is said and done.

Our Southern country and my native Appalachia have been dealt a terrible blow by Hurricane Helene and now we learn Florida will face another with Hurricane Milton as I write this piece.

As I watched the stream of bits and pieces coming out of east Tennessee, southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, I found myself rolling back into my post tornado senses.
I had the urge to go out and get in the car to go to help with the rescue and response. The reality of it was, I was hours away, there was little I could do in areas where I was unfamiliar with the territory and without an organization on the ground to which I could connect, unlike in my own hometown.

As I saw ancestral towns that previous generations called home in distress, it pulled upon me, knowing there was little I could do at this point but pray and share opportunities for people to assist financially as I found solid leads for help.

From my experiences, I learned it is the local churches and local non-profit volunteers supporting local fire, sheriff’s and police departments alongside the responding city and county workers that carried us through. Endless hours and endless tasks as long as there were more to help, more to seek out, more to provide for days, weeks and months.

As I have seen the needs on social media streams, the remote areas impacted in the Appalachians, I know the rescuers have their tasks cut out for them to try and reach as many as they can. I have seen teams on foot, on horseback followed by pack mules or pack goats, folks on ATVs, and helicopters and drones carrying in supplies, and those same helicopters taking survivors to safety.

The devastation across six states will require months and in many areas years to recover as towns were simply wiped from the face of the earth. We need to include these rescue and relief workers and the victims constantly in our prayers as our lives go on as normal, theirs are mired in the mud that now surrounds all they knew.

If you are able to physically respond and volunteer in any of the impacted areas, I encourage you to seek out opportunities and bless those in need. If you are able to give, please find local churches or non-profits or those you know for sure are on the ground making a difference. My experience is your monies go farther and are better utilized with them than if given to well-known nationally known organizations. The one exception to nationally known in my experience is Samaritan’s Purse which I have seen on the ground working in the Appalachian areas. The Cajun Navy has been very active in the response as well. Also, there are many private helicopter pilots flying missions and their fuel costs are extensive. So, if you can find ways to help those through charities or individuals, I know it will be an appropriate place for funds.

Once all the areas are reached and the living are initially helped, there will be thousands without a houses because insurance will not cover their losses either at all or even in part. Their homes will have to be rebuilt and there will be need for money and volunteers.

There will likely be thousands that must be buried once that phase becomes the focus. I read of one family that lost fifteen members as a house slid down a mountainside. In the end, many families will never know what happened to their loved ones because no body will be recovered or will be recognizable or identifiable wherever they may have washed to rest. With their homes washed away, knowing whether they had any life insurance will likely be very difficult. Their survivors will need help and I imagine counties will be developing cemeteries for rest of the unknown victims.

Special places can connect the decades

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Have you ever stood in a particular place, scanning the horizon taking in all that is in sight?
For my exercise I stepped upon the front steps of the Ringgold Depot in Ringgold, Ga. looking northwards along the route of the U.S. Highway 41.
As you recognize all within your purview, could you imagine how many have stood exactly where you do seeing the same view through history?
The Ringgold Depot was completed in 1849, two years after the founding of the city. Upon its dedication by the Western & Atlantic Railroad, I can imagine the new city commission standing in front of it looking out upon Ringgold.
My cousins George Anderson and Michael Dickson, who were on that commission, may have stood there imagining what their community would become now.
A decade earlier, Cherokee Assistant Chief Richard Taylor stood looking out upon his former domain as 1,000 people began the long journey to the Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears. Among them were some of my cousins who would marry his daughters.
Twelve years later in January 1861, two more cousins Joseph T. McConnell and Presley Yates would stand there looking out before stepping up on the train to travel to Milledgeville. Their trip in the coming years would change the vista from the Ringgold Depot. They were sent to vote in the succession convention. One would vote for and one against. The majority chose to leave.
A year later, the stationmaster would stand there watching the General, the Texas and the Catoosa speed by as part of the Great Locomotive Chase brought about by Andrews Raiders.
One more year would pass and the future President Ulysses S. Grant would stand looking out at the town of Ringgold as shots fired down upon him from White Oak Mountain behind the station as his army was trying to beat the retreating army.
In the 1898, thousands of soldiers would stand looking upon Ringgold on their way to Camp Thomas in western Catoosa County to train for the Spanish American War. Seven hundred and fifty two of those soldiers would not look out on the view again for their return trip. They perished from camp diseases.
For years to come, the soldiers would stand and look out one last time at their childhood town, as they would leave for WWI, WWII, KOREA and Vietnam. Many would hold on to that view and the partings with their mom, dad, wife or girlfriend throughout their journey hoping to see it and them again.
With the abandonment of passenger service to the area, the Depot only took on occasional cargo shipments but it soon became simply a fading memory of the past until the city businessmen turned it into a concert venue.
For me I stood there and welcomed thousands while hosting monthly gospel concerts for over a decade and as a council member I helped ease the building into its role as a community center.
One place to stand, one ever-changing view with unchanging elements, thousands of eyes, thousands of stories, 18 decades, I have reflected back upon.
Is there a similar place that you are in daily, weekly, monthly in your hometown? Do you know how it touched people’s lives or do you take it for granted. Does it need some attention, some love, some recognition, or some signage? Maybe you could help make that happen.
Even the simplest place can reach across the years and connect us.