The devastation was sudden, and the damage is incalculable. With dozens killed and thousands of homes devastated, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear is saying that it will take weeks just to assess the destruction caused by a series of tornadoes that crossed eight states on Saturday.
As usual, though, local REALTORS®—working together, through their associations, or on their own—are making a difference.
Jensey Blackwood is the executive officer of the Mayfield-Graves County Association of REALTORS® in western Kentucky, at the epicenter of some of the worst damage. The association headquarters itself suffered major damage, with a picture Blackwood shared on Facebook showing the five-story brick building with chunks of its roof torn off and debris draped out of smashed window frames.
“It’s still standing, but it does have very significant damage to it,” Blackwood told RISMedia. “Nobody was inside the building at that point.”
Many people have not been so lucky, Blackwood says, with a need for everything from non-perishable food to baby food to outdoor work clothing as many continue to shiver in homes without power or crowd into shelters
“People are cleaning out their houses and they’re wearing like, layers of pajama pants because they don’t have warm weather gear,” she says.
The National Guard has already set up shelters and distribution centers at the local fairground near Mayfield, according to Blackwood, and churches and local businesses are collecting funds and supplies.
“Our hearts are with those impacted by the tornadoes that devastated much of the southern and midwestern United States this weekend,” NAR President Leslie Rouda-Smith said in a statement. “NAR and the REALTORS® Relief Foundation are working with our partners on the ground – particularly in Kentucky – to determine how we can most effectively help these communities heal and recover.”
Paul Del Rio, Director of Communications for the Kentucky Association of REALTORS® (KAR) told RISMedia that they are “looking to do a little bit more,” focused on middle to long-term relief including putting together a housing fund as well as organize days for local associations to drive down for clean up projects or other support.
“On a state level, we’re really trying to take a three-prong approach—direct people on where to deliver physical items, we’re working to be able to collect money to distribute to help those in need with emergency funds, and then also to work for long-term housing relief,” he says.
All of those efforts are still in process, with Del Rio saying that new information is coming in every hour, and every town and neighborhood facing its own challenges.
The need for support and relief is likely to persist for weeks, or even months, according to Blackwood and Shelley Lewis, who is the executive officer for the neighboring Pennyrile Board of REALTORS®. Lewis says one of her board members had his home completely destroyed.
An outpouring of support, however, has meant that some areas are actually inundated with supplies and volunteers, and one of the things both she and Blackwood emphasizes is that people will continue to need support after the tragedy fades from the national news cycle.
“Wait a couple weeks, when a lot of supplies have been distributed, people are going to need some more help and a lot of help will be gone,” Lewis says.
Her association has actually discussed holding non-perishable supplies in reserve for when people need help in the coming, frigid weeks. In these early days she says that one of the harder things is finding out what people need and how to get it to the affected areas because roads are blocked, phone lines are dead and internet access is limited.
“We’re struggling to get a hold of a lot of people, to find out what people do need,” she says.
Marsha Case is president of the Central Kentucky Association of REALTORS® and a broker for Showcase Real Estate Group in Danville—around 250 miles away from where the tornadoes did their damage. But she has spent the last couple days, she says, collecting supplies at her office to get down to the affected areas. She emphasized the need right now is for immediate relief—warm clothes, generators and food that can be eaten without any fuel or power.
“We’re getting a lot of macaroni and cheese, but these people don’t have a way to cook macaroni and cheese,” she says.
Other offices and associations all around the area are putting together similar drives—though it is not always as simple as getting the supplies together. Case says the truck she hoped to send had been delayed twice. Other crews have struggled to get into the areas affected, she says, with roads blocked by debris.
But that hasn’t stopped everyone from doing everything they can to help out those in need.
“There’s agents from every office, other brokerages are dropping off—it’s just a team effort,” Case says. “Everyone is trying to do something—every walk of life, just bringing bags and boxes and everything they have that they can possibly get down there.”
A local business, Wildcat Moving, “donated a truck or two” to the effort in Lexington, according to Case, and churches are gathering money and putting together their own efforts.
One of the biggest barriers has actually been communication and just figuring out how to help. She says she was only able to reach colleagues at the Kentucky State Association of REALTORS® as well as the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) the morning of Dec. 13, two days after the initial storm after scrambling to make sure her own members were safe.
“Today has kind of been my phone day,” she says. “We kind of finally got our head on straight where we kind of know what to do.”
“Our hearts are with those impacted by the tornadoes that devastated much of the southern and midwestern United States this weekend,” NAR President Leslie Rouda-Smith said in a statement. “NAR and the REALTORS® Relief Foundation are working with our partners on the ground—particularly in Kentucky—to determine how we can most effectively help these communities heal and recover.”
An email chain connecting the three associations who serve regions that were most affected have helped coordinate relief efforts, according to Blackwood, which she says will allow them to figure out the most effective way to move relief that comes in from the state or national level.
What both Lewis and Blackwood emphasized over and over, though, was the extent of the damage—not just in terms of the immediate devastation, but how long it will take for these communities to find more permanent living arrangements and get back to their jobs, their schools and their lives. Lewis pointed out that relief workers and first responders will continue to need support even after displaced people are given a lifeline, and with the full extent of damage even now unknown, she urged real estate professionals and those outside the immediate community not to forget them.
“Right now, we have tons, but we’re going to need this in a couple weeks,” she says. “That’s the main thing, I think. We’re in the very beginning stages of figuring out exactly how to help.”
Donations to the REALTOR ® Relief Foundation can be made here.
Jesse Williams is RISMedia’s associate online editor. Email him your real estate news ideas to jwilliams@rismedia.com.
