Rachel Essner
Disaster struck Mayfield, Kentucky on Dec. 10, 2021, when an EF-4 tornado nearly destroyed the town. However, many people do not know about the next catastrophe, known as the “disaster after the disaster.”
In the following days and weeks, people from surrounding areas as well as around the country, came to Mayfield to lend their services and volunteer their time to help tornado victims. Donations and volunteers flooded into the town.
Reis Witte and Omarcus Jenkins, Murray State students, heard about a church group that was gathering volunteers to help out in the following days after the tornado.
“We showed up at the church and found someone in charge and said ‘We’re here to help. Where do you need us to go?’” Witte said. “They first had us sort through clothes, then we moved supplies into cars for people to come pick up and then we packed up some food in my car and passed out meals to people around the town. That’s where we got to see a lot of the damage, which was really sad to see.”
“We really just wanted to help out in any way we could,” Jenkins said. “We all piled into Reis’s car, showed up at the church and tried to help out wherever they needed us.”
While donations and volunteers are much needed, Mayfield Emergency Management Director Tracy Warner said the excess amount of both created a problem.
“My thought for the ‘disaster after the disaster’ was the amount of volunteers that showed up,” Warner said. “We didn’t know our damage extent yet. We didn’t know where we needed people or what we needed done but thousands of people showed up asking how they could help.”
Warner said they also had difficulty when it came to the overwhelming amount of donations, since many of their storage facilities had been damaged.
“We had semis pulling in around two in the morning with trucks full of donations,” she said. “We had semis showing up all night, and I thought ‘We need to start scheduling this better.’ My plans were using the fairgrounds as a drop-off site and we had pick-up stations. It was all a mess until they finally got a system going to where they can drive in one way and go out the other way and they had enough volunteers to sort everything. ”
Warner said she was not expecting the amount of volunteers that showed up during the first week following the tornado.
“We had 2,867 people who actually signed in to help during that first week and we sent them all to Catalyst Church,” Warner said. “I kept apologizing to that pastor because we just kept sending them people. We just didn’t know what we needed or where we needed it.”
When asked what people should do to help, Warner said to sit tight.
“Let those people figure out what they need,” she said. “Don’t just bombard them and say ‘I’m here to help.’ [They] don’t even know where to start.”
Sarah Burgess, Kentucky State Police officer, played a key role in sharing this message. Burgess said her job in public affairs was primarily focused on emergency communications and the emergency operations center.
“One of my biggest priorities was getting information pushed out through media releases,” Burgess said. “Doing interviews and just basically getting the information out there on what resources we have, what we’re doing and what’s needed to kind of remedy [the situation].”
As a law enforcement officer, Burgess has a lot of connections, allowing her to find empty semi-trucks and storage locations outside of the disaster area to store many of the donations.
However, resolving the “disaster after the disaster” was a team effort. Burgess praised Warner’s abilities to create an organized system for volunteers and donations.
“As far as the incoming influx of volunteers and donations, it took a lot of conglomerate effort to coordinate how that was going to work,” Burgess said. “Tracy did a really good job on getting a structure set for that on phone numbers, a phone line specifically for volunteers.”
Burgess shared the messages that, as part of Warner’s system, were given and asked to anyone volunteering or donating.
“If you want to volunteer, call this line and we’ll put you on this list. What skills do you have available to us? And then if you have donated goods that you want to bring in, we’ll put you on this list and we’ll call you when we need those items.”
Burgess and Warner worked side-by-side to push this message to the public.
“Tracy would get these phone numbers set up and these phone lines and the distribution points all figured out,” Burgess said. “Then I would gather that information and push it out to the media or be able to tell the media ‘This is where people can go if they want to volunteer. This is where they need to call first. Get on this list if you want to send goods and this is where they can go if they need help.’”
Warner said while this was a very stressful situation that took lots of time and effort, they are now more prepared for any emergencies that may hit Graves County in the future.
