How to get involved with clean up after a tornado

[kmreid]

Unfortunately, I am sure many of you have heard that Mayflower and Vilonia in Arkansas sustained quite a bit of damage from a tornado on Sunday evening. I live less than an hour from that area, and I was wondering who I would need to get in touch with to volunteer to help out? I am sure some of you have a bit of experience with assisting with search and rescue, and clean up efforts after a tornado has hit an area, so I was wondering if anyone could offer advice.

 

[rdale]

Contact your local Red Cross. DO NOT DRIVE TO THE SCENE AND SHOW UP (not yelling at you, just making sure everyone is clear )

 

[Matt Tottle]

^^This!! There is WAY too much going on after a disaster for those on-scene to deal with people just showing up. If you do, it is an almost certainty that you will be turned away. And it's not just because you're a civilian either, there was a group of firefighters from around here that took it upon themselves to show up in Moore last year.. They were told thanks but go home.

If you feel you would like to be ready for future incidents, see if there's a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) in your area. You will get great training for the kinds of situations you'll encounter - like proper SAR procedures and safety, first aid/CPR, etc. If another disaster happens, the CERT teams from the surrounding areas may get called to help.

 

[Elaine Spencer]

There will be plenty of opportunities to help out AFTER the immediate search and rescue operations have ended. Communities devastated by tornadoes, especially high-end, violent, killer tornadoes, take years to fully recover and volunteer efforts do continue in the meantime.

Your help may be most needed several weeks or months down the road when the media and first responders have moved on and the rest of the world has pretty much forgotten what happened.

 

[kmreid]

Unfortunately, that is the case more often than not, so I completely agree with you. This is exactly why I wanted to ask on here. I want to be a part of a solution....not be an added hindrance to an already terrible situation.

I am not sure that I am cut out for search and rescue exactly. I admire the people that can, and will do it, but I am not sure that I could handle coming across someone who lost their life. I would be fine with clean up a few days from now (to allow search and rescue time to try to locate missing persons), or even bringing in supplies if needed. Plus, I have had CPR/first aid training in the past, but my certification is not current, so I wouldn't be much help in that respect.

Thanks for the advice! I am going to look into it further.

 

[kmreid]

There will be plenty of opportunities to help out AFTER the immediate search and rescue operations have ended. Communities devastated by tornadoes, especially high-end, violent, killer tornadoes, take years to fully recover and volunteer efforts do continue in the meantime.

Your help may be most needed several weeks or months down the road when the media and first responders have moved on and the rest of the world has pretty much forgotten what happened.

You have pretty much hit the nail on the head. I think you have a great point!

 

[Daniel Rodriguez]

If you have a Military/LEO/First Responder background you can check out Team Rubicon, they are a volunteer organization and they have done quite a bit of tornado search and cleanup work, anything from digging through debris to rebuilding. They deploy both stateside and internationally. They were sending emails the day before yesterday to get their people mobilized so they are pretty proactive and do good work.

http://teamrubiconusa.org/

 

[Paul Knightley]

http://stormassist.org/

This is a great place to start, especially from a financial standpoint.