Headwaters Relief Organization has been closely monitoring Hurricane Laura. The hurricane battered the Louisiana and Texas coastlines early this morning, bringing extreme winds, flash flooding, and an expected storm surge, after sweeping ashore as the region’s strongest storm in over a century.
The storm reportedly made landfall as a Category 4 storm and has since weakened to a Category 2 and still sustaining winds of 110 mph. The storm is now moving north to Arkansas, further weakening but still bringing damaging winds and flooding rainfall over central and northern Louisiana as well as some regions of Texas.
We are asking for people interested in volunteering that are willing to support communities impacted over the next few weeks. We understand that no disaster relief work is easy and this time it is very challenging due to the ongoing pandemic and the need for safety measures.
There are a lot of unanswered questions like what will we be doing as volunteers? We have begun assessing what we would be doing. It will likely include cleanup and possibly rebuilding. We will continue to gather information as it becomes available.
Our team is in constant touch with our partners and friends in the region and in the field. We are closely monitoring the situation and likely we will have an assessment team on the ground immediately.
While we learn more about the situation and the needs of the community we would like to hear if you are interested in volunteering and if so the following:
Dates available: Trips of at least 5-7 days duration, your days available between September 4th – October 4th, 2020.
Mode of travel: We are exploring travel depending on the storm path and available options. Please let us know you would prefer to drive by yourself to get there, ride with other volunteers if safety measures are in place or choose to fly.
Accommodations: We will look for the possibilities; hotels or accommodations provided by partners.
Most importantly, you need to consider your personal comfort related to Covid-19 while volunteering. The pandemic adds additional risks to our volunteer work.
Please let us know at info@headwatersrelief.org.
We also want to communicate that we have followed the storms in Cedar Rapids, Iowa closely. We sent in an assessment team and at this time, according to our nonprofit partners, they are not currently seeking additional volunteers. We will keep you posted on that progress. We are also following the situations in Wisconsin and Minneapolis and the unrest in both places. There may be opportunities to assist as we did in Minneapolis/St. Paul earlier this summer. Again, we will keep you posted.
Thank you. Stay safe and healthy.