Hand in Hand volunteers and staff are providing tornado relief in areas devastated by Friday's tornadoes. Staff from Hand in Hand's Auxier Center have been in the Salyersville area where St. Luke's church was destroyed along with many homes where they have been part of search teams, clean-up and more for those affected by the storms.

Monday morning update

Our focus is going to be on tornado relief in Salyersville and Magoffin County - areas we have worked in since 2005. St. Luke's Church was destroyed Friday afternoon by a tornado that also destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes in the area. There were 7 neighbors who had taken refuge from the storm in the basement of the church and were trapped by debris until rescued (unharmed) about an hour after the storm.

Helen Penningtong ran St. Luke's Open Door food bank and clothes closet. It is the only food bank serving Magoffin County. With a 23% unemployment rate in Magoffin County, the food bank was vitally important to the area. Fr. Bob Damron, the pastor of St. Luke's, has already announced plans to rebuild, but it is going to take a long time.

Hand in Hand volunteers had renovated St. Luke's several years ago and continued to provide clothing, food and other items to the food
bank. Hand in Hand is helping set up a temporary replacement and is in
emergency need of bottled water, non-perishable foods and canned
goods. We also need cleaning supplies, diapers, pull-up diapers, adult
diapers and personal care items.

We have enough clothes from previous donations and need to focus on
the items listed above.

We have also been inundated with requests for home repair and are
working on scheduling trips to help as many people as we can. Needless
to say, our budget for home repair did not include response to this
natural disaster and we donations to help as many people as possible.