The Tampa Bay area was impacted by 2 hurricanes within 2 weeks.
September 26, Hurricane Helene caused historic flooding in coastal areas. Then October 9th – with debris from Helene still piled on curbs all across the region, Hurricane Milton hit as a category 3 hurricane just south of Tampa Bay. The winds knocked down many trees and and caused wide-spread power outages, and 10-15 inches of rain caused unprecedented flooding to areas near creeks and rivers.
The biggest impact near us, was to the Standard Apartments at Drew St. and US 19, where nearby creeks overflowed, flooding some apartment buildings up to the 2nd floor. More than 500 people were rescued and lost their homes.
Jen and I have been wanting to help (volunteering and/or donating) those impacted by Milton but were having difficulty finding detailed information online. So, today, we drove to Light of Christ Catholic Church, where the Red Cross has set up a temporary shelter for those with nowhere else to go.
We brought with us water and MREs a friend of ours gave us earlier in the day (Thanks Kim!)
Here’s what we learned about the Red Cross shelter:
- There are about 80 people staying in the Red Cross shelter
- The shelter will take water and packaged food, but not much else (no clothes, shoes, etc)
- They do not need local volunteers (Though the people we talked to were super-friendly and encouraged us to register to be Red Cross volunteers for future needs)
From there we drove by First Christian Church of Clearwater, which is a donation site for people from the Standard Apartments.
What we learned about the First Christian Church donation site:
- They are accepting donations of just about everything. We saw clothes, shoes, toiletries, non-perishable food. I even saw to-go boxes, which I presume had prepared meals in them.
- The most pressing need they have is for toiletries, especially soap, body wash, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and deodorant.
- If you want to help, just show up and they will put you to work sorting and distributing items.
- They said they would be there tomorrow 11am-6:30pm tomorrow (Oct 20). (Not sure beyond that)
I did not see more info on the First Christian Church website (though I could have missed it). Their Facebook page says “Donations and volunteers are welcome through Sunday, October 20 (11am – 7pm)” but does not make it clear whether or not donations and volunteers would be accepted after that.
If you’d like to help…
I know this is late notice, if you bring toiletries to the Journey Community Church gathering tomorrow morning at 10am, we will drop them off at First Christian tomorrow afternoon.
Or course you are welcome to drop things off yourself and volunteer.
When we go there tomorrow, we’ll ask if they’ll be accepting donations and volunteers in the future, and we’ll update this post when we know more.