2024 Tennessee

The Situation in Tennessee

September 2024), and did "oh so much" damage, we went over to try and see how we might be able to help. The aftermath of Helene was a catastrophe. The hurricane dumped 40 trillion gallons of rain on these areas. For comparison, that is enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys stadium 51,000 times. It was an astronomical amount of water. Which ran into the valleys and rivers... and in some places created a flooded river where there was no river. Some Rivers, in narrow valleys rose as much as 50 feet across just a couple hours. Whole towns wiped out... all buildings just gone... the river carved new landscapes, while washing villages downstream.

We had heard about the great need for recovery efforts, so we (along with the amazing help of our son Taylor) gathered up a bunch of chain saws, generators, and our go bag stuff; and we decided to go see how we could help.

THE AFTERMATH - - Here is the aftermath of an RV Park down next to the river that was just washed away. The RVs that did not get busted up completely, were lodged into trees. The amount of trees uprooted and sent downstream to get piled up is staggering. This is were we spent a large amount of our time, with the chainsaws, cutting trees away from other properties to assist in getting bigger equipment into the area.

THE DONATION CENTER - - We also found a Donation Center in the town of Greenville, TN, operated by a local church. Their operation was amazing. With so many donations coming in, and so many places and people that needed to get those donations, it can be difficult to get it all figured out. So they had a couple of folks working the phones and coordinating all of the work; while the rest of us jumped in to get the work done.

Here you see a bunch of racks. The racks were donated, but came in little pieces, so we first had to put the racks together. That took up the first day. Then, we had to take the food donations that were sitting in piles, and sort them onto these racks, This really helped the workers who were trying to fill up a need basket, to find the food and canned goods that they needed.

Also, in this Donation Center, they had to deal with an overwhelming amount of clothing that was donated. But the clothing came in bags, all mixed up, and often unwashed. So the job here is to sort by size and kind of clothing. What dirty and messy job.   

Here is a look at the whole distribution center (right hand side), to give an idea of the scale of this operation.

Here is a look at the whole distribution center (left hand side), to give an idea of the scale of this operation.

ON THE WAY HOME - - So, once we were done with a week of chain sawing and donation sorting, we were able to take advantage some of the natural beauty of the area. Here we are on a trail near Gatlinburg TN in the Smokey Mountain National Park.

Here are on top of Clingman's Dome, the highest point in the Smokey Mountain National Park.  

And then, while taking in the sites on Main Street Gatlinburg, we received a pic from our son and his wife, with them making a funny face..... So, we HAD to send a "funny face pic" back to them.

2024 Tennessee

THANKS FOR TAKING THIS JOURNEY WITH US!
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