The Rev. Rick Wilkins of Mayflower said many people are still struggling to get back on their feet after the city’s deadly April 27 tornado, but help is coming.
Wilkins, chairman of the Interfaith Partners Disaster Alliance, said World Renew, a worldwide charity, will send volunteers to Mayflower and Vilonia for two weeks to meet individually with people who need assistance.
Those affected by the tornado may go to walk-in centers in Vilonia and Mayflower from Sept. 29 to Oct. 10.
“They won’t need much, except to explain what help they have received and what help they need,” Wilkins said. “We have access to all [Federal Emergency Management Agency] records and all Salvation Army records, so we will know what help they received.”
If a person has a FEMA identification number, he should bring it, Wilkins said.
“We lost 800 homes, and we had 16 fatalities [countywide]. Forty-one percent of that was uninsured,” he said.
“You can imagine who they are — they’re in the RVs on the side of the road, in hotels and apartments. … They’re renting, predominantly. They’re so tight on money they can’t even afford medical insurance, forget about personal-property insurance. They simply paid for what they could afford, gas and food (prior to the tornado).
“They’re hurting,” he said.
The walk-in center in Mayflower will be at Mayflower United Methodist Church, Arkansas 89 at Grove Street. The hours of operation will be 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 29 through Oct. 3; and Oct. 6-10. The center will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 4.
In Vilonia, the walk-in center will be open the same hours at 1122 Main St., Suite 9.
World Renew volunteers will also go door to door to find people who need help, Wilkins said.
He said the volunteers will wear “distinctive green shirts.”
“They’ll be here two weeks on their own nickel,” Wilkins said. “Nationwide, they’re 3,000 people, and we’re only going to get a dozen. The leader and one couple and a computer expert will be at the walk-in center in each city.”
Other couples will canvass the hardest-hit neighborhoods, he said.
He said the Interfaith Partners Disasters Alliance, which includes seven churches, is a nonprofit organization.
“The blessing is, we’re a totally tax-exempt organization in Mayflower,” he said.
“We’re not getting paid. We’re just doing this out of kindness and love for our fellowman that got hurt,” he said.
The Mayflower alliance is partnering with the Vilonia Disaster Recovery Alliance.
Martha Martin, chairwoman of the Vilonia board, said several organizations are working in the community, but World Renew is welcome relief, too.
“Vilonia lost a lot of homes. There’s still a lot going on here,” Martin said.“There’s still a lot to do; there’s still a lot of volunteer work to do.”
World Renew’s volunteers specialize in needs assessment, she said.
“They assess their [residents’] needs on a points system that will be put in a database … that we we can look at and prioritize. We will upload these to our computers and train someone from each team from Mayflower and Vilonia who will be able to access this database and set our recovery based on the needs in the database.
“That’s what we’ll base our grants off of — even though you don’t have a home. Are you living in a house with 15 other people because that’s the only place you can find to live, or are you paying rent so high that you’re in debt?”
Martin said the Vilonia disaster group has been doing intakes for two to three weeks, based on sign-up sheets from earlier relief efforts.
“We do an intake that lets us check their FEMA number, insurance, how many is in their household, income, their status.
“Right now, what we’re seeing is there are people that, a lot of them live paycheck to paycheck, and everything was OK till April 27, and they suddenly didn’t have a home,” she said. “They weren’t able to work because they were having to either clean up their property or do all the paperwork that was required” with loans and FEMA applications.
They also had to try to find a place to live, she said.
“You go to bed tonight, and you get up in the morning and everything’s gone — it’s not you just go over there and start your life again,” Martin said.
Although her home was spared in the April tornado, Martin said the alliance and its members were affected.
“We lost our old office space, the old City Hall building. We lost everything we had, plus I think four of our members lost everything they had,” she said.
The Vilonia Disaster Recovery Alliance was formed after the city’s 2011 tornado.
“We’re working with a lot of people that were wiped out in 2011, and they’re still recovering,” Martin said.
And some whose homes were destroyed in 2011 were hit again in the April tornado, she said.
The alliance was scheduled to move Sept. 20 into its new space on Main Street.
Martin and Wilkins said that in addition to groups already on the ground in their cities, World Renew’s volunteers will make a difference.
“That’s going to really help us expedite our recovery process,” Martin said. “They’re bringing their people to do the work, and that’s going to free us for now to do other things and to prepare what’s going to come next.”
For more information about Mayflower’s center, call recovery coordinator Janice Mann at (501) 205-6873; for Vilonia, call (501) 428-9228 or email vdracares@gmail.com.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.