BOONE, N.C. — Samaritan's Purse, the non-denominational Christian relief organization based in Boone, is heading to Kentucky and Arkansas to help those affected by the massive tornado that has left dozens of people dead.
"I’ve been with the ministry 17 years," Todd Taylor, the manager of U.S. Disaster Relief of Samaritan's Purse said. "We’ve seen some Christmas tornadoes, we've seen Christmas ice storms but nothing to this magnitude. So we immediately started making preparations throughout (Friday) evening as we saw these happening."
Taylor said the organization began sending crews to Arkansas on Saturday.
"First off it’s getting on the ground Intel," Taylor said. "While we appreciate all the media coverage, we often find that with these tornadoes and some of the reports, while it looks like substantial damage, it may be a very limited scale. Where this one is so widespread it’s really hard for anybody to come to grips with what’s happened."
The organization, according to Taylor, will start sending crews and equipment to hard-hit Kentucky on Sunday.
"So we are working with local church partners, first and foremost, to be able to find out what is the on the ground situation and then we’ve got our team of program managers that are in transit right now to get into these areas to begin meeting with local emergency management officials, meeting with our church partners and key volunteers, that have been out with us on other storms across the nation that may live in those areas, just to be able to get a good sense of where we need to be and start defining what a response is going to look like, even before all of our equipment leaves our warehouses," Taylor said.
As the organization's crews assess the damage, Taylor said it's hard to say how many volunteers they will have.
"We are continuing to respond to Hurricane Ida that happened in August," Taylor said. "We have three teams of people down in Louisiana, we have another team of people in Watkin County, Washington from the flood that happened last month up there so we’re really busy and we’ve been given a great opportunity to show Christ’s love to a lot of hurting folks."