Floods
Construction Supplies Requested for Texas
OGT’s VP of Operations Grant Schmidt visited the Houston area and met with several different organizations to discuss what their needs are and how OGT can assist the victims of Hurricane Harvey. The Texas District’s immediate request is for construction and supplies for rebuilding homes, such as lumber, drywall, generators and tools. At this time they are not requesting clothing, quilts or medical equipment. Setting up the volunteer village is still in the works. The devastated area expands hundreds of miles and to set up the village we will need the best location for serving those in need along with obtaining permits for setting up. Any of the construction supplies can be delivered to the Norfolk OGT warehouse at 606 West Phillip Avenue Monday through Friday from 9 AM – 4 PM. Monetary donations can be sent to Orphan Grain Train, P. O. Box 1466, Norfolk, NE 68702 or donate on line by clicking the Donate button. Please indicate disaster relief – Hurricane Harvey. If you would like to double your donations and your impact please read below about Thrivent Financial's amazing offer. Thank you for assisting the victims of Hurricane Harvey through Orphan Grain Train. Please pray for those that have lost so much.
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Double Your Donation for victims of Hurricane Harvey!
Once again Thrivent Financial will double your contribution for Orphan Grain Train through Thrivent’s website. You can make a personal donation on Thrivent.com for OGT to provide assistance to Texas hurricane victims. When you do, Thrivent will double the impact - up to $3 million. This opportunity will run until the $3 million match is met or until December 31, 2017, whichever comes first. Go to www.Thrivent.com, click on Hurricane Harvey Relief and choose Orphan Grain Train to make your online donation. All donations have to be made online through Thrivent’s website. What a wonderful way to double your impact for those in desperate need in Texas. Please continue to pray for those that have lost so much.
Disaster Relief Planned for Texas Residents
Orphan Grain Train is planning for several shipments of goods, food and supplies as well as the volunteer village for relief efforts in Texas following the destruction of Hurricane Harvey. We will need to have dry ground to set up the volunteer village units and permits obtained. For now we are collecting hygiene kits (these can contain toothpaste), new underwear and socks, tennis shoes, diapers, formula, non-perishable food, cleaning supplies to include large sponges, large heavy trash bags, brooms, mops, 5 gallon bucket, dust masks, safety glasses, work gloves, cleaning gloves (kitchen latex), tarps, pry bars (for removing sheetrock), square shovels, wheelbarrows, pressure washers (gas), and gas powered generators. A cleaning bucket can be prepared which would include a 5 gallon bucket, 1 large sponge, 1 roll paper towels, 2 gallons of liquid cleaner (Mr. Clean, Pine-sol, Lysol), 1 powder cleanser (Comet, Ajax), 1 kitchen latex gloves, 1 broom, and 1 mop. Any of these items can be delivered to the Norfolk OGT warehouse at 606 West Phillip Avenue Monday through Friday from 9 AM – 4 PM. The cost to transport one truckload round trip including processing fees, warehouse storage and delivery is approximately $6,000.00 so any financial support would be appreciated. Monetary donations can be sent to Orphan Grain Train, P. O. Box 1466, Norfolk, NE 68702 or donate on line at www.ogt.org. Please indicate disaster relief – Hurricane Harvey. Thank you for supporting the victims of Hurricane Harvey through Orphan Grain Train. Please pray for those that have lost so much and for the dedicated rescuers. (8-30-2017)
Please Help Us Help Texas
Orphan Grain Train needs your help to assist the residents in Texas devastated by Hurricane Harvey. The rain and flood waters continue to ravage a large area of Texas including Houston, surrounding region and coastline. Some areas have received as much as 49 inches of rain and may take up to a month for waters to reside in low lying areas. Orphan Grain Train is in desperate need of hygiene supplies or better yet hygiene kits already made up to be distributed to the victims of Hurricane Harvey. Items included in a Hygiene Kit are a bath towel, wash cloth, bar of soap, new tooth brush, tooth paste, sturdy comb and 6 Band-Aids. For more information about assembling Hygiene Kits, please click on How You Can Help then Special Projects and Hygiene Kits. At this time we do not know other supplies that will be needed until waters reside and requests are made. Please deliver these to the Norfolk warehouse at your soonest convenience so we can get them delivered to those in need in Texas. The first shipment to Laredo, TX contained water pumps, supplies and food left on Monday, August 28, 2017. Other shipments will be going to Texas, especially after water resides. This will be a costly mission with transporting goods and supplies to our neighbors in Texas. If you would like to contribute monetarily to help with transportation costs please click on the Donate button and write in the comments section Hurricane Harvey or send a check marked with Hurricane Harvey to Orphan Grain Train PO Box 1466 Norfolk, NE 68702. Thank you for your support of Orphan Grain Train and please pray for the families, rescue workers and everybody affected by Hurricane Harvey. (8/2017)
Louisiana Flood Relief Continues
OGT continues to help flood victims in Louisiana. Last September the Norfolk warehouse shipped a load of food, water and clean-up/rebuilding supplies to Pastor Ed Brashier, the LCMS Southern District Disaster Relief Coordinator to distribute to volunteers and churches in the Baton Rouge area to help flood victims rebuild. OGT has also given $18,000.00 of donations for “Louisiana” to the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank to replenish their food supply for flood victims. A Shower Trailer for volunteers was delivered to Baton Rouge from Norfolk, NE. That unit is part of Orphan Grain Train’s “Disaster Village” inventory and will stay as long as it is needed. OGT’s Ohio Collection Center arranged transportation of 26 pallets of food and beverages from a major food distributor to Baton Rouge. OGT continues to help our neighbors in Louisiana and if you would like to make an online donation, please click on the Donate button and write “Louisiana” in the comments box or you can send a check marked with “Louisiana” to Orphan Grain Train P.O. Box 1466 Norfolk, NE 68701. Thank you for your support of the missions of OGT. The pictures are from Pastor Brashier of the Baton Rouge flooding. (10/2016)
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Supplies Needed for Flood Victims in Louisiana
The flooding in Louisiana is devastating and OGT is preparing to ship needed items for disaster relief. OGT’s Norfolk warehouse (located in Norfolk, NE) and some of the other OGT regional locations will be shipping needed supplies. Please contact your local OGT site to see if they are planning to ship to the disaster area. If you are not able to donate needed items and would like to help, please consider a monetary donation for OGT to purchase some of the necessary supplies or to help pay shipping expenses. The items requested for flood clean up and rebuilding are:
3M first aid kits
N-95 respirators
Work gloves
Hazmat suits
Gallon Ziploc bags for volunteer lunches
Nonperishable snacks such as energy bars
Bottled water-16 ounce size for volunteers
Fork, knife, spoon and napkin packs
Diapers and baby supplies
New underwear in plastic packs
New socks in plastic packs
Rubber Maid waterproof storage containers
Wheelbarrows
Flat shovels
Box cutters and blades
Mold killer - borax (1 cup per gallon of warm water will kill mold)
Pry bars
Sledgehammers
The destruction from the flooding is widespread and more than 60,700 homes have been destroyed that it will be a long term clean up and rebuilding of the disaster area. If you would like to send a monetary donation or donate on line then please designate it to “Louisiana Flood”. You can mail donations to: Orphan Grain Train P.O. Box 1466 Norfolk, NE 68701 or online at Donate Now
Thank you for your support of Orphan Grain Train and its mission to help our neighbors devastated and hurting in Louisiana.
Amazon Wish List for Louisiana Flood Victims
OGT is excited to share another way you can donate to the cause of the Louisiana Flood Victims. OGT now has a Wish List with Amazon.com where you can purchase relief supplies that ship directly to the Norfolk warehouse. You can click on the link below or go to amazon.com, create an account, click on Lists (by Shopping cart upper right corner), then Wish List then Your Friends, type in Orphan Grain Train and start shopping.
Thank you for supporting OGT with this domestic disaster.
OGT Donates to Help Flood Victims
Memorial Day floods of 2015 devastated Blanco county and surrounding counties in Texas. It had the highest flood waters ever recorded in Texas history and several lives were lost. Orphan Grain Train donated $7,500.00 to the Lutheran Social Services Disaster Response Division. The money will go towards the Blanco River Regional Recovery Team, which is helping residents rebuild their communities. Officials with the counties say they expect the recovery to take several years. The Blanco River Regional Recovery Team is designed to aid in long-term recovery. Prayers for the families devastated by the floods and for recovery efforts. (10-2015)
OGT Helps People in Kansas
Jefferson County in North East Kansas is under a ‘boil water’ order from the State Sanitation Department. The need for drinking water in Jefferson County KS was brought on by heavy rains. Contaminated runoff polluted a large reservoir that supplies several villages in the county, so residents will be required to boil their drinking water for the next 30 days. During the week of June 15th we delivered semi-trailer full of bottled water as well as a 6,000 gallon tank trailer filled with clean drinking water to Ozawkie, KS. The trailer was parked at a distribution site so that residents can fill their larger containers from the spigots on our trailer. When the trailer is empty, a local trucker will move the trailer to a fill site, then refill it and bring it back to the distribution site. This process will repeat as often as needed. This is another way that Orphan Grain Train Disaster Relief reaches out to help those who are suffering. (6-17-2015)
Flood Victims Getting Help
This is a photo of OGT’s “Big Kitchen” as it leaves Norfolk warehouse on the morning of June 3, 2015. The kitchen is equipped with a large freezer, refrigerator, stove, ovens, and fryers. It will be serving a Christian Youth Camp near Fischer, TX where their kitchen was destroyed by floodwaters. Summer Bible Camps will be able to proceed as scheduled. When those activities conclude in early August, the Camp will house volunteers that will be working on cleaning up and repairing homes in the area that sustained flood related damage.
Orphan Grain Train's Mobile Kitchen
Forgotten Disaster
On June 22, 2011, the city of Minot, ND was hit with a FEMA classified, Level Five natural disaster, as the Souris River, fed by four Canadian Reservoirs, flooded the city for more than five weeks. Water levels more than 12 feet in depth cascaded through the city at up to thirty miles per hour, moving homes and business off their foundations and leaving little more than rubble in its wake. In the flood, an astonishing one fourth of the city’s housing, more than 4100 homes, were damaged or destroyed. Compounding the disaster’s effect is the fact that the city of Minot, population 43,000, was already consumed by a critical pre-flood housing shortage due to an oil boom economy. The end result is that 12,000 people, nearly one-fourth of the city’s population, were scrambling to find shelter of any type. From June to the end of December, there was hardly a family that did not have one or two other families sharing their home. Some homes were shelters for up to five flood-devastated families.
What makes this disaster even more tragic for those involved is that flood insurance was non-existent. The flooded areas were not classified as a flood plain, which means that of the 4100 homes that were flooded, only a handful, approximately 280 families, had flood insurance of any kind. Since a person’s homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage, an astonishing 3800 families are without any insurance as they seek to rebuild their lives.
The crisis becomes even more intense for devastated families as one considers that only 18 FEMA trailers were in the government’s entire inventory at the beginning of the flood. The final family was finally placed in a FEMA trailer shortly before Christmas.
The housing crisis also severely hurt volunteer efforts. Willing volunteers were available.
Orphan Grain Train Rolls into Minot
Two 20 ft. storage units, two 48 ft. storage units, an office unit and tool trailer with tools, generators, pressure washers, a 40 ft. by 40 ft. tent, and supplies for mucking out flooded homes, have been sent by Orphan Grain Train. A volunteer village is in the plans for the near future. Orphan Grain Train sent 21 mobile disaster units which included; 6 mobile shower/restroom units, an industrial kitchen unit, another 45 ft. mobile office unit, 7 bunk bed units, and the mobile chapel unit, which was used in Greensburg Kansas after tornadoes devastated that city in 2007. These facilities made it possible for volunteers to help with the recovery and rebuilding effort, without adding to the housing problem there in Minot. In the words of Rev. Paul Krueger of Minot, “Without the Orphan Grain Train there would not have been a recovery, because everything in the town was destroyed or in such bad shape that there was not a spot to store anything. Disaster recovery for the entire city is being run out of the Orphan Grain Train office unit. If it would not have been there, where would it have happened?”
