October 28, 2021 – Following major tornado damage in Gulf region of Orange County, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana on Wednesday, October 27th, ROWW is deploying a volunteer team to conduct debris removal and access road clearing work. An EF-1 tornado touched down in Jackson, MS and an EF-2 hit Lake Charles, LA. Sawyers will fall and buck dangerous trees and our team will go door-to-door of the hardest hit communities and offer help and assistance.
Once we arrived in Lake Charles with our sawyer team there wasn’t the type of tree work we anticipated by news coverage of the storm. We surveyed the area and found spots of damage and areas of mostly open field damage. There were indeed homes that were damaged by the tornado however most were already being rebuilt or repaired.
Nov 1, 2021 – Team ROWW made the decision to revisit the bayou town of Thibodaux, LA. We recently helped residents after Hurricane Ida hit in September. We facilitated a house rebuild. The home took a foot of water and heavy tree damage. Our team of volunteers initially got to work and fell dangerous trees. We also worked alongside Simpson Strong Ties volunteers to reinforce the flooring, install sheetrock, and install new flooring we purchased from Lowe’s Home Improvement, our official disaster relief partner.
It’s not often we deploy and don’t complete multiple repair or relief jobs. In this situation we deployed while the tornado and storm were still actively traveling North so the damage wasn’t as tremendous as anticipated or reported, to our relief! We first met ZZ, a local resident of Louisiana, in late August after his family and home was affected by Hurricane Ida. He made an incredible impact on us. He was full of life and was quick to develop innovative ways for his community to stay clean, healthy, and fed! When we realized there wasn’t much for our team to do following these tornados we were glad to make the trip to see him and help his family rebuild their home.
Nov 5, 2021 – We’re now traveling home for some much needed R&R and will be ready to go when the call comes next!
Thank you for all your support and donations. Your generosity makes it possible for us to assemble teams quickly to get boots on the ground!