LONDON, Ky. — Volunteers are on the ground and resources are being collected for tornado victims at a central distribution site in London.
Lieutenant Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, D-Ky., joined volunteers and law enforcement officers collecting supplies.
Among the wreckage and distruction at the London-Corbin Airport sits an essential resource center. It has food, hygiene products, baby necessities, household items and more.
Caitlin Stehn is a volunteer with the nonprofit group All Hands on Hearts.
She said, “Over here to my to the left, we’ve got all of our food items, all perishable items that are getting sorted by our fantastic volunteers, making sure that we know what kind of inventory we have so that we can get it organized and sorted into boxes to then be distributed in a more organized fashion”
There are dozens of groups organizing resource drop-offs and pick-ups for storm victims.
Adleigh Scholer is a cheerleader at North Laurel Middle School and she was helping out.
She was making sure kits were complete. She said,“First aid kit that’s already put together. There’s two different kinds. This one’s got electrolight in it, and I saw gauze, and that one has a lot of scissors, nail clippers and stuff. And they make sure have some sunscreen”
The school year is over for Laurel County schools and Scholer took advantage of the opportunity to help the community. She said, “[I’m] thankful that I get to be here and volunteer, but I also feel very bad for all that did lose. And I’m happy to help”
Stehn, acknowledged the hardship being felt in the county, but also the outpouring of community support. Stehn said, “You see the good I mean in in the most horrible situations there’s always good doesn’t make the horrible any less heavy but the beauty does help and being together I can’t tell you how much sharing a hug with someone shares the burden and it’s really beautiful”
Lt. Gov. Coleman said, “Seeing people from other states, to see people from across Kentucky show up. They may or may not know someone here. Right. But they are there. They just jumped in to help. They got to work. They didn’t ask any questions. Nobody cares who you are or where you’re from or anything like that. It’s truly about helping neighbors and we see it everywhere. So it’s not that’s not surprising to me. But it it still means so much every time I get to see it,”
Coleman said London is the 15th federally declared national disaster in the state. Kentucky is currently waiting for federal disaster relief support for last weekend’s tornadoes.
Coleman added, “But we’ll be here until the job is done. And that’s evidenced by today. He is actually in let your family delivering keys to families for ten homes that we’ve moved out of the flood plain into the high ground from the last flood”
All Hands on Hearts has a disaster assistance response team that visits and determines the needs of an area to help establing long-term support programs within impacted communities.
