Tornado Volunteers Needed Badly This Weekend

One final push. That’s what the residents of the tornado-ravaged Highway 70 corridor need from you this weekend.

“We had as many as 300 and 400 folks out on on a given weekend day,” Volunteer Director Kevin Tucker said. “Recently, those numbers have slipped to single digits. And we’re hoping with good weather this weekend that we can we can reach three digits and get a lot of folks back out to enjoy the weather and help the survivors and do something wonderful for the community.”

Volunteers will spend Saturday and Sunday hauling final debris to the roadside for a final pickup. The firm hired by the county stands ready to make a final pass of the corridor next week. After that, the responsibility to remove debris will be on individual homeowners.

“We’ll give you a sled, we’ll give you gloves and rakes and shovels, and you’ll go out into the community and rake and shovel and fill that sled full and pull it to the edge of the road,” Tucker said. “This will be the last weekend that the hauling operations will exist. And it’s why it’s critical that we get as many volunteers out to really pick and clean the properties as best we can to take advantage of the hauling to the landfill.”

Volunteers can show up between 8am and 4pm through Sunday at the Putnam County Fairgrounds. Once you fill out a short form and waiver. Then, Tucker said you will be sent to specific areas where homeowners need help.

“The worst thing that could happen is that we don’t get this work complete and there’s reminders of the storm left out there in the community,” Tucker said. “That’s the that’s the real push. We want to put things back as close to normal as we can. A lot of progress has been made.”

Volunteers must be 18 years of age or older and social distancing will be practiced.