FACING THE STORM
Locals aid hurricane evacuations, get ready for aftermath
Local volunteers and officials prepared on Friday to help victims of Hurricane Harvey, both where the storm will land and here if necessary. ¶ As the most dangerous hurricane to threaten the U.S. in years spun toward the Texas Gulf Coast, Texarkanians gathered disaster relief supplies and readied to travel south in anticipation of extensive damage.
Outside The Salvation Army’s Center of Hope shelter on East Fourth Street, Corps Officer Maj. David Freeser and volunteers Sann Terry and Harlan Jones packed an emergency response canteen truck with water, food and other supplies.
They expected to depart within a day or two, as soon as they got deployment orders from the state Salvation Army headquarters in Dallas. Another twoor three-person crew will relieve them 10 days later.
Freeser said he expects the organization’s tractor-trailer-sized field kitchen, which can prepare 15,000 meals a day, to be deployed in response to Harvey, so the Texarkana canteen will bring more water and snacks than meals.
Freeser has been a disaster response veteran since 1992 and is an emergency aid trainer for the state Salvation Army organization, he said.
American Red Cross volunteers and assets such as cots and blankets needed to set up an emergency shelter were on standby, said Eric Cain, executive director for the Northeast Texas and Southwest Arkansas region.
About 200 Red Cross volunteers are certified across North Texas, and about 10 percent are deployable at any given time, Cain said. They will respond after Harvey makes landfall, as soon as chapters in the affected part of Texas tell them where they are most needed.
Anyone who wants to volunteer with the Red Cross should visit redcross.org and apply there, Cain said. He warned against sending supplies directly to the
disaster zone, where no one will be prepared to receive them. Instead, a monetary donation is the best way to help.
Thirteen staff members of CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System flew on short notice Friday to help in Santa Rosa in South Texas, where more than 70 patients evacuated from sister hospital CHRISTUS Spohn in Corpus Christi, Texas, are being treated.
Twelve nurses and a nurse manager answered the call to go to the anticipated disaster zone not knowing when they will return, Chief Nursing Officer Louise Thornell said. Other staff members volunteered to cover for them here at home.
“It is a true team effort.
This is what it means to be a CHRISTUS nurse,” Thornell said.
Electric company SWEPCO is sending 67 employees from the region to help restore power after expected widespread outages caused by Harvey.
“We are also sending 120 contractor personnel for a total resource count of 187 full time employees and contractors. All the crews are leaving Saturday and will report Sunday morning for work assignments around the Schulenburg, Texas, area,” SWEPCO spokesman Scott McCloud said.
Both Freeser and Cain said they did not anticipate any evacuees being sheltered in Texarkana. It is most efficient to house large numbers of evacuees together in bigger cities, they said, and only if such large-scale emergency shelters overflow will any hurricane victims come here. The Salvation Army shelter would be one place where evacuees could live.
Terry Purvis, deputy director of the Miller County,
Ark., Office of Emergency Management, said Texas and Louisiana officials have informed him that neither state will be sending any evacuees to Arkansas. He was busy Friday making sure the county was ready for any disasters, such as flooding and tornadoes, that Harvey’s remnants could cause this far north of landfall.
“We’re preparing for the worst and praying for the best,” Purvis said.
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