Just over ten days after Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina, Category 4 Hurricane Michael made landfall inland over the Florida Panhandle area early Thursday morning, leaving several parts of the State in ruin. Some of the most severely hit places include Mexico Beach and Panama City. Fatalities and destruction were also reported in the States of Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, and also the Carolinas.
The NAD ACS Disaster Response, Southern Union, and the affected States’ Conference ACS leaders have been in communication to discuss the positioning of our team members for Recovery Efforts throughout the affected States. The NAD, along with ADRA, made financial support available to each affected area through grant opportunities for their corresponding Conferences. We have also assigned some Contact people the responsibility of being our liaison to the State VOADs in the affected states of FL, AL, GA and NC, thus enabling us to gain understanding of the preparations that others are involved in as well.
The following Recovery Efforts are now taking place as we develop our response in key areas in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia:
- Conferences are working to obtain items for the cleanup kits/flood buckets that will be needed in the coming weeks as Recovery efforts begin.
- The South Central and Gulf States conferences have set up Distribution sites for incoming donations.
- Deliveries of nonperishable food items, hygiene kits, and etc. are being prepared by Southeastern and Florida conferences.
- Tallahassee Spanish SDA church has agreed to set up a Distribution Center for the community within the next few days.
- Seeking feeding trucks to work in partnership with Salvation Army and State officials to feed communities.
- The State of FL has asked us to have a team ready for the management of a Warehouse in Tallahassee. Both Florida and Southeast conferences are identifying individuals for this team.
- Also, the Seminole and Daugherty counties in GA have requested Warehouses and we currently are working with them to identify a facility that can house these operations.