Tonight's post will be brief, as I am totally exhausted. I'm not sure why, I haven't done all that much but I can barely keep my eyes open. Today I went to check on an elderly man who, well, to keep a long story short and not divulge detail, is in great shape for somebody who has lost their house and he didn't need our help; but was certainly grateful for the check up. After that we went into the neighborhood where he lived and met with a handful of families, and were happy to find that everyone we found has had their immediate needs met, whether through family, friends, church, or all of the above. Community is truly an amazing thing in these situations. We visited a Southern Baptist Church which was the shelter in this man's community and were blown away; they have rooms and rooms full of food, bedding, clothing, and cleaning supplies. It seems as though they have been able to all but single-handedly support all of the affected people in their community. So after a brief tour of this area, about an hour from Chattanooga, we returned to headquarters to work on administrative paperwork, etc, as this operation is just getting started up.
Tomorrow should be a long day. Despite only doing some administrative tasks in the morning while everyone else is in church, in the afternoon we will be heading to a neighborhood where between 2 households 8 people were killed. A pair of mental health workers returned from this area this afternoon and were totally unable to keep their composure while relaying what they found. Again, without going into detail, the people are absolutely devastated, thoroughly traumatized, and will not recover from this any time soon, if ever. You can try to imagine the results of something like this; I'm sure what awaits is infinitely worse.
I'll give an update tomorrow about what happens, hopefully we can go out and start the groundwork for these families to recover.
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