Michigan Volunteers Aid Oklahoma Tornado Victims
MOORE, Okla. (WWJ/AP) - There are about 300 American Red Cross volunteers providing food and aid in Moore, Oklahoma in the wake of a deadly tornado -- and some of them are from Southeast Michigan.
WWJ Newsradio 950 spoke Friday with Allison Koenigbauer, who is helping provide clean-up kits, and mental health support.
"When we're doing is concentrating on mobile feeding, mobile aid stations and handing out cleanup kids," Koenigbauer said. "Because, in the beginning, they couldn't get back into their neighborhoods."
"They can get back in now, and now is when they need us to come out and help them," she said.
Koenigbauer said she drove by one of the most devastated neighborhoods in Moore.
"It was like nothing I had seen ... It really didn't look like a neighborhood at all. It looked like a big field with a lot of debris; no walls were up anymore -- no nothing," Koenigbauer
Just, you could see the concrete , you know, slabs for the ..where the driveway would lead to the garage and that was it."
"I know we'll be here as long as we're needed and it looks like that's going to be for some time," Koenigbauer said. "There is a lot to do here."
Koenigbauer said donations to the Red Cross are needed to help them be able to respond to a disaster at a moment's notice.
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The tornado that struck an Oklahoma City suburb this week may have created $2 billion or more in damage as it tore through as many as 13,000 homes, multiple schools and a hospital, officials said Wednesday as they gave the first detailed account of the devastation.
Also Wednesday, authorities released the identities of the 24 people, including 10 children, who perished. While anguish over the deaths was palpable as residents began picking up their shattered neighborhoods, many remained stunned that the twister didn't take a higher human toll during its 17 miles and 40 minutes on the ground.
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