Texas organizations are answering the call for help as parts of the South and Midwest are ravaged by powerful storms.
Fredye Quain arrived at the Levy Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas on Saturday. Quain is a volunteer with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Disaster Relief team, which is headquartered in Grapevine.
“I’ve been blessed. Seeing these people out here that’s not blessed, it’s heartbreaking,” Quain said.
Volunteers like Quain will be feeding people in need, though he said it is unclear how long they will stay in Arkansas. Texas Baptist Men, another disaster relief organization, announced Saturday they are heading to the Little Rock area for a similar mission. More TBM units are expected to deploy soon, according to the organization.
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Possibly dozens of tornadoes touched down Friday and into the night across at least seven states, killing at least 22 as of this writing.
Among the dead included four people in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, and three in Sullivan, Indiana. Other deaths were reported in Alabama, Illinois, Mississippi and the Little Rock area.
A Circle K gas station along Rodney Parham Road in Little Rock was among the structures that have extensive damage as a result of Friday’s storm. The roof, back room, and garage were destroyed.
Store manager Brandi Pelkey said she, other employees, and customers ran to the back to seek shelter.
“Like a train, being hit by waves,” Pelkey said, referring to the loud wind. “It like a power washer. Just the wind, debris hitting you. Just like felt like the power washer, the water spraying you. It burned.”
At a neighborhood nearby in west Little Rock, neighbors began the clean-up process. Brian Roper has lived in the neighborhood for more than 20 years.
“Never seen anything like this, ever,” Roper said. “Never. Nobody has.”
Roper said he was watching the storm from his garage and then ran inside.
“It got so close. They were swirling. I shut the garage door. My garage door glass started breaking, kind of on me as I started to run inside,” he said. “I went inside, everything started falling. Trees, the back, everything around me.”
The tornadoes that devastated parts of Arkansas and other states are part of a sprawling storm system that also brought wildfires to the southern Plains and blizzard conditions to the Upper Midwest.
