As the brum-brum-brum-brrrr sounds from the chainsaws from the Texas Baptist Men’s mission roared in the background, Jacksonville Arkansas resident Christine Hodge continues to assess her next steps to recovery as she recalled the tornado that caused so much damage to her community and her home.
“My husband had just gotten home at 2:30, he was standing in the backyard watching. 'Ain’t nothing going to happen,’” Hodge said with a chuckle. “He’s from Alabama, he isn’t scared of nothing. I told him they just called it a tornado emergency; they said it is in Jacksonville, you need to come in the house.”
Hodge said she looked out the now shattered sliding glass doors facing the backyard and told her husband, “That’s debris and it’s coming right at us.”
She and her husband and dog took cover until after the tornado struck her and her neighbors' homes. She’s safe now, but she knows the cleanup and recovery will take months.
American Red Cross volunteer Yvonne Lambertson came to Little Rock from Nebraska. She along with Little Rock volunteer Tim Luckenbach walked the devastated Loop Road area where Hodge lives, talking with her and others in the neighborhood about the resources the Red Cross continues to provide those displaced by the deadly tornados.
Lambertson has been volunteering with the Red Cross for less than 2 years and has responded to over a dozen disaster operations from Kentucky to California, and now Arkansas in that brief time. As an avid weather channel watcher, she says she is always ready to pack up and go. “I absolutely love going out and helping people. That’s the satisfaction I get, going out and helping clients,” Lambertson said. “When they see us, they feel comforted. I get some of them that shed tears, they just want a hug. “
As a volunteer, Lambertson says she gets a lot of questions about what she does with the Red Cross.
“I do my own social media and when I’m heading out to whatever disaster I’m going out to, I get asked ‘How do I volunteer?’ and I tell them RedCross.org. They love what I do, and they want to do it as well.”
Lambertson is passionate about her work with the impact she makes in so many lives across the country as she showed off her Red Cross tattoo across her forearm. “I love the Red Cross. I got it last year while I was in Kentucky. Then I got another that says ‘Humankind’ while I was in Orlando for Ian.”
As the Wednesday noon emergency sirens blasted in the background sending a chill down Hodge as she remembers the storm that changed her life. She says she is so appreciative of the volunteers and the help that organizations like the Red Cross have provided has been enormous. “Volunteers have been great. They came in immediately and helped. We have been in no state of mind for anything.”
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