00:00St. Louis was hit with a devastating EF3 tornado earlier this month, leaving hundreds of families in need.
00:06Now, a team from North Texas has deployed to help with the cleanup.
00:10The Minuteman Disaster Response Team is in St. Louis, helping tornado survivors clean up and start over.
00:17Fourteen years after their first deployment in Missouri, and that was in Joplin.
00:21So, volunteer George Smith is joining us now with the latest.
00:24George, we appreciate your mission, all that you do.
00:27And what's the situation there in St. Louis now?
00:29What are the greatest needs after this tornado?
00:32Well, the greatest needs right now are the tree removal and the debris removal.
00:38We've had some volunteers from other organizations that have helped with some of the removal.
00:44But a lot of these houses, they've been hit really hard.
00:49They've lost their roofs.
00:51The trees are on top of the roofs.
00:55They're in places.
00:56There's cars that are crushed all over.
00:58And it seems like it always hits the areas that need the most help and the people have the least to have in the community.
01:09So, we come from McKinney, Texas.
01:12We started with 250 volunteers.
01:15When the Joplin tornadoes hit, it was a vision of our founder.
01:24And we now have over 750 volunteers.
01:28And we travel all over.
01:29And this is a place where we come to help people.
01:32All right.
01:34So, what does a typical day of cleanup look like for your volunteers?
01:38Well, we do an assessment on a typical site that we have for a homeowner.
01:45There's actually four or five homeowners here that we work with.
01:51And we go in with a team of knowledgeable sawyers and heavy equipment operators.
01:57And we come up with a plan.
01:59And we talk with the homeowner and see what their wishes also are.
02:05And then we kind of attack the situation very safely.
02:09As you've noticed, some of the videos that you're seeing, everybody is wearing PPE hardware for their hats, as I am, and our chaps that we use for the ballistic nylon so we don't get cut with our chainsaws.
02:29We drop these trees and we haul them out.
02:33And then the city or other volunteers will clean that up.
02:37There are skills that are very important.
02:38I know that not every tree is easy to cut down when you have other obstacles nearby and all kinds of hazards.
02:45What other specific skills are most needed?
02:47And how long are your teams going to be there to help?
02:50We're going to be here at least three weeks, maybe longer.
02:55We have our base camp set up.
02:59Over at the Bass Pro in St. Charles, where we house our volunteers.
03:04And any donations to minutemanresponse.org would help.
03:10We are a completely free organization.
03:14When we go in to help people, we charge them nothing.
03:18So it's all donations, and we're all volunteers.
03:22So you were talking about those donations.
03:25So, yes, how can people help support or join Minuteman Disaster Response?
03:30So the best thing to do is go into minutemanresponse.org, and you will go on our website, and you can actually see where you can make a donation, or you can also join and serve in that area.
03:46All right.
03:46Well, we certainly appreciate all that you're doing there.
03:48George Smith with Minuteman Disaster Response.
