Nashville Tornado: Day Three-On The Ground
/
As we enter day three of our tornado response, we wanted to share our latest observations and action plans:
We've observed a high level of medical difficulties amongst seniors and the disabled in Germantown & North Nashville attending our Feeding site. As days without power tick by, their health concerns increase with limited to no access to medications and support. We've made a call for nurses and will begin to have a nurse there to help starting this Friday. We have an open invitation for medical personnel to serve at our Germantown /Salemtown location at 11am daily at 1628 Rosa Parks Blvd.
To respond to a high volume of hunger relief needs, we will lift our limits on food box distributions occurring at this site, allowing locals to receive as many food boxes as needed during the first month following the tornado.
To respond to growing concern over the health and well-being of low income children impacted by the storm, we will begin offering our MyCanvas art therapy programming at this site to help children who are out of school, and without power and food, to process through the trauma of the storm.
WHAT WE ARE DOING:
GERMANTOWN
- Feeding Station for residents & responders
NASHVILLE
- Response teams for debris removal, chainsawing, & tarping
COOKEVILLE
- Response teams for debris removal, chainsawing, & tarping
THE NEED:
Germantown - Direct hit to homes and businesses; Growing concern about the need for hunger relief for families without power, especially low income or disabled families and children living in the area or families taking shelter in local facilities.
Nashville - This continues to be a search and rescue operation and crews are going house to house. At this time, there are 24 confirmed fatalities, including some children, and more than 88 injuries are being treated at Cookeville Regional Medical Center.*
Cookeville - Putnam County emergency officials confirmed 18 of the 24 Nashville tornado fatalities occurred in this one community, 77 remain unaccounted for at this time.**
HOW TO HELP:
Donate: click here
Volunteer: click here
Mail: Gift Cards & Checks
We need gift cards and financial donations, desperately:
Home Depot and Lowe's cards: for home repair work and debris removal tools
Gas cards: to get volunteer teams to and from the disaster sites where homeowners are in need
VISA cards: for clients who have extreme financial needs for survival, and for disaster work supplies
WalMart cards: to feed volunteer teams, and for clients with extreme financial needs for survival (ex. Pharmacy medications, baby supplies, etc.)
Gift Cards & Checks can be mailed to:
Inspiritus
Attn: Disaster Response
P.O. Box 60597
Nashville, TN 37206
We need your help as those vulnerable in the path of this storm will need additional resources and shelter. To that point, we are also collaborating with our friends at Lutheran Disaster Response, the Tennessee VOAD, the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA, and the Mid-South District of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, as we assess and prepare our short-term and long-term response and recovery work in Middle Tennessee. We are closely monitoring, day-by-day, the emerging needs of the community surrounding our Inspiritus Nashville program site, and will need partners to help us to continue to respond to these needs next week.
To donate, click here and select Nashville 2020 Tornado. Our prayers are with everyone in this tornado's path.
Blessings to all our friends and family in Nashville!
-Virginia Spencer
Vice President of Development
Inspiritus
P.S. Volunteers from across the community and the region unloaded 5,807 pounds of food this morning into the Inspiritus food pantry to be distributed into the North Nashville/Germantown communities. Thanks to the Southeastern Synod ELCA, we have a generator to be able to handle cold products. For the duration of the disaster relief the eligibility requirements will be loosened. Thank you Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee!
