Since Sunday, they’ve collected about $10,000 in cash and two truckloads of items, including food and cases of water, Casey Tingley, a co-organizer, said Monday, noting that donations were still coming in.
“We all woke up and got dressed this morning, had a house and a bed to sleep in last night. But, they don’t,” he said. “It is a horrible time of year for something like this to happen.”
At least 64 were killed and dozens more were reported missing Monday. Residents in impacted counties could be without heat, water or electricity in frigid temperatures for weeks or longer, Kentucky officials said.
Tingley teamed up with two of his longtime friends — Kyle Greene and Steve Tobin — and they hatched a plan Saturday afternoon to raise money and collect goods for victims in Mayfield, Kentucky.
The group will transport the donations in a semi-trailer and a box trailer to the Mayfield-Graves County Fairgrounds, where out-of-town donations are being collected and distributed to residents.
They are scheduled to depart from Springfield early Wednesday, Greene said. Items to be transported include cases of water, food, bags of clothes, diapers and other baby supplies.
The group has also collected about $10,000 in momentary donations as of Monday for Kentucky tornado victims. Some of that money will be used to buy more clothes for those impacted and other essential items, as well as purchase gift cards or be used for direct cash donations.
The group formulated the idea to raise money and goods on Saturday and spent hours outside the Walmart on Tuttle Road the next day collecting those donations.
They also worked with several friends and other community members to use trailers to transport those goods as well as find a location in which they could load those goods.
On Monday, with the help of about 20 students from the Springfield-Clark Career Technology Center, they filled a semi and box trailer up with those goods. However, the group expects more donations to come in.
George White, a Forestry and Parks Management Instructor at the CTC, said that he and his students got involved due to a student having a father who knew Greene.
White said that his students, along with those in an engineering program at the CTC, helped Greene and Tingley load trailers with donated goods on Monday.
“I think it’s good for (the students) to understand when someone else is hurting it’s always good to be there to help them,” White said.
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