The cleanup and recovery from Hurricane Sally will continue for months. Since the storm hit the Alabama Gulf Coast two weeks ago, volunteers from around the country have worked to restore power, distribute supplies, and remove tons of debris. It’s not unusual to have thousands of visitors on the Alabama Coast, but many of those here now aren’t lying on the beach. They’re working to help residents needing food, ice, electricity, repairs and cleanup assistance. Coordinating all this is a big challenge. That’s the job of Baldwin County VOAD. That’s short for Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster. That group is working to match assistance with needs.
“There are thousands of requests for help,” said Dana Jepsen, VOAD’s chair.
She said a system is now running where residents needing help can call an 800 number to register their immediate needs.
“They speak with an intake specialist and give their name, address and phone number and answer some questions about the need they have in their house and then it locates them on a map and we can pull up a map of Baldwin County and look at all of the needs across the county and their priorities and what exactly they need done at their house and that really helps with matching up the volunteers’ skill sets with the houses to send them to,” Jepsen said.
Two centers are also running in Robertsdale and Gulf Shores to generate people power. Jepson said volunteers can register to help.
“If anybody in the community wants to help with the cleanup effort or not in the community, but across the state or region wants to come it would really help if they would coordinate through those centers just so we know who’s in the community working and we can track all of those hours and everything,” she said.
Jepsen says assistance is coming in from all over.
“Team Rubicon is here. Samaritan’s Purse is here. The Baptist Relief are here. Encore. Assemblies of God, the Latter Day Saints,” she said. “There’s countless list of groups, affiliated volunteer groups for sure working in the community and then there are just good-hearted individuals who want to help as well.”
In Daphne, Red Cross volunteers from Raleigh, North Carolina handed out meals at a city food distribution center. Roxanne Manuel has seen storms before, but Sally’s impact surprised her.
“A lot of devastation,” Manuel said. "We’ve gone to Foley and Gulf Shores and it’s pretty bad down there. Power outages in a lot of places so people are really hurting.”
Laurie Winkelstein got help when disaster struck her family in North Carolina. Now, this is a chance to pay back that kindness.
“We’ve always appreciated the help that we got when there’s been disasters in North Carolina and we feel it’s fair to give back somewhere else,” she said.
Jepsen said donations are also coming in. Prodisee Pantry is Baldwin’s largest food donation center. They volunteered to help process the donations.
“They are taking in donations of food and supplies,” she said. “They’re not able to take in furniture or clothing, but another other relief food and supplies can go there because they’ve got the forklifts and the loading docks and they’re using volunteer manpower to offload those trucks and then what they call palletize it, which is basically pack it into boxes for a family to come pick up.”
On a Saturday morning after Sally hit, hundreds of cars lined up in Spanish Fort for a food distribution at Prodisee Pantry. Like most in line, Elizabeth Finch lost all the food in her refrigerator when the power failed. Still, she felt lucky to have gotten through the storm.
“When things started hitting the trailer and the trailer started moving, a little bit, yeah. Our mobile home actually did OK,” Finch said. “We’re from Bay Minette, but the neighbors across the way, the trees fell on theirs.”
By the end of the morning, volunteers had distributed 35 tons of food to over nine hundred families. Many locals didn’t expect Sally to be as bad as it was and were caught unprepared.
“We’re distributing emergency food to Baldwin County families who would be hungry,” said Deanne Servos, director of Prodisee Pantry, an underwriter of Alabama Public Radio. “They’ve lost the food in their refrigerators,” she said. “They’ve gone through what they prepared for Hurricane Sally and we’re here because it’s about hunger at Prodisee Pantry.”
Gulf Coast residents have dealt with storms before. But they haven’t had to deal with a hurricane in the middle of a pandemic. Servos says this is a new challenge.
“We know how to respond to disasters like COVID. We responded after Ivan, after Katrina. COVID kind of gave us a little push to get our operations plan back up and running,” Servos said. “It’s an interesting development to have two disasters at the same time so the changes to our operations plan are the social distancing, wearing face coverings to help protect against COVID while we’re responding to the most basic human needs.”
Servos says many local volunteers are helping even when their own homes are damaged or without power.
“Everybody that’s here volunteering today lives in Baldwin County. Some don’t have power. Some don’t have water, but they know and feel blessed that they survived the storm and they know some of their neighbors are less fortunate and need a helping hand and that’s why they’re here,” Servos said. "Lending their hands today to make sure that Baldwin County families are fed and know that their neighbors care about them.”
In Gulf Shores, National Guard troops from Troy handed out food, ice and tarps at the city Sport Plex. Specialist Aldric Cade has never seen the effects of a hurricane.
“Seeing the devastation. I wasn’t expecting it to be as bad as I saw it with the trees overblown and houses being destroyed and stuff like that. Flooding and such,” Cade said.
Specialist Alleia Holland has been encouraged by the public response.
“People have been, this whole experience has been very fulfilling because everybody’s spirit has just been so uplifting, welcoming," she said.
Specialist Jeremy Brunson was also amazed by local support.
“It’s been an experience,” he said. “But everybody’s been very grateful. Just seeing the community pull together. It’s a great thing that we’re able to come down here and help out and provide support.”
No one is sure how long support will be needed, but Jepsen says help will be available as long as it is.
“It could be weeks. It could be months, but we’ll be here until we’re not needed,” she said.
An Alabama Public Radio news feature, which is part of APR effort to address the "news desert" along the state's Gulf coast. APR recruited and trained veteran print journalists in Mobile and Baldwin counties to join our news team to do radio stories from along the Gulf coast.