To give y’all a better idea of what exactly went on with the Windsor tornado, here is a link to information provided by NOAA. One of the pictures shows a house with not much left of a garage; I think we drove by this house.
Salvation Army
Windsor
This morning Noah and I up got up at 4:30am to head north to Windsor to prepare breakfast with the Salvation Army EDS team. We served about 300 servings of eggs, sausage and hash browns to National Guard soldiers, Air Patrol Cadets, Windsor and Greeley police, Windsor Fire and city officials and of course, EDS volunteers and employees. Once breakfast was served we started to prepare another 300 or so lunches that would be given to a nursing home in Windsor as well as soldiers working in the field. We worked in the canteen for about 6 hours this morning and then had the opportunity to take a tour of the damaged areas of the city.
Growing up in earthquake country seeing tornado damage is almost hard to fathom. I have never experienced a tornado and hope I never will. But the their destruction is so random! In an earthquake epicenter there is damage everywhere and it’s very obvious. With tornadoes, it really is hit and miss! The side of town our command post was located had little to no damage. Looking around you would never have guessed there was a tornado. The east side of town was not so fortunate, but at the same, it was not as if everything was demolished or damaged. There was one neighborhood that every house was practically destroyed, and buildings across the street looked as if they were not even touched! The Salvation Army employee that took us and another volunteer around said that about 100 damaged homes were able to be repaired, but another 100 or so were condemned. We saw one house that only had 1 wall of the garage left standing. Most were missing roofs or had damaged roofs. It’s an EDS semi-policy not to bring cameras to events, so we took what we could with our cell phones. I have uploaded the pictures from mine here, and when I get a chance I’ll add the pictures and video Noah took with his phone. It was not what I expected, but then again I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a great experience and one I will never forget.
One thought I had while touring the city, that’s a bit morbid, is that although the tornado was a horrible act of nature and cost so much damage, it will create the workload and jobs needed to help sustain the slowed construction economy. So even in the darkest of situations there is always a silver lining.
Buckley AFB
Yesterday we skipped church to put in some EDS hours with the Salvation Army. As you know from my previous post, it wasn’t an emergency situation, but a good way for us to break in our EDS legs and do a good deed!
We arrived at Buckley Air Force Base (Aurora, CO – 45 minutes SE from from our house) around 10:30am and proceeded to help prepare food. Noah and I started washing veggies and fruits for platters, then I got pulled away to make fruit dip. Once those were done, it was back to helping prepare the veggies.
There were about 10 EDS volunteers/SA employees there. The meal was layed out buffet style and included fruit/veggie platters, sandwiches, meatballs, scallops, hot wings, spinach pastry things and of course dessert. We served the meal for about 125 family members of the 140th Air National Guard, which is currently touring in Balad, Iraq.
Santa & Mrs. Claus also came to give all the children presents. We also learned that the National Guard has a partnership with the Colorado Rockies, where each family that has someone overseas during the holidays gets a check for $400! That’s awesome! Also, an American Legion post had donated 25 turkeys to be raffled off to the families!
It’s so great to see a community pull together to support our troops and their families here at home.
Despite how tired our feet were by the time everything was cleaned up, it was a great experience that we’re both glad we had the chance to participate!
Supporting the Troops
Noah and I are performing our first volunteer service with the Salvation Army this Sunday. We are going to one of the nearby military bases (I can’t recall which one right now) and serving a Christmas dinner to National Guard families who have a husband/wife, etc currently on deployment.
I’m looking forward to it. This is a great thing to do for our military families!
Now all we need is our base clearance. Lol!
I’ll post more on this after it happens.
Joining on Up
After much discussion and research Noah and I went down to Centennial to enlist in the army…the Salvation Army, that is. We spent all day in training to be Emergency Services Volunteers. We got down there at 8am this morning, the first part of the day we went through the disaster services aspect of training. The 2nd half of the day we went through the food training. By 5:30 this afternoon we had two certificates and picture identification! We’re now on the list to be called to help out at emergency disasters. Depending on the location and notice will determine how much time we can serve with our work schedules. Many of the people in the class today were retired, so time will not be a big obstacle for them.
Examples of the disasters the Salvation Army has participated in is Ground Zero, Katrina, the mine collapse in Utah, local tornadoes, fires, car accidents, search & rescues in the mountains, etc. The days we work will be long and exhausting but I’m looking forward to the experience since I want to work in trauma response, and I need to hours for my grad school applications.