Crawford County residents and businesses are stepping up to the plate to help those in Joplin who lost everything in Sunday's killer tornado.
Donations of food, clothing, water and toiletries have been pouring into collection points in Pittsburg and Arma, and the biggest sites are at Meadowbrook Mall and the Weede Gymnasium.
At the mall Tuesday afternoon, volunteers from the Pittsburg Area Young Professionals, Eagle Beverage and ESPN Radio 99.1 took truck and carloads of donations. They loaded crates of bottled water, non-perishable food items and medical supplies onto a Budweiser delivery trailer provided by Eagle Beverage, which departs each day for Joplin at about 4:30, or whenever the trailer fills up.
The effort was sort of spontaneous. Eagle Beverage General Manager Steve Beykirch said he knew by 9 p.m. Sunday that he would be able to use the truck, and contacted the mall early Monday. At the same time, Christel Benson of the Young Professional contacted mall officials to ask about setting up a collection point there. And 99.1 General Manager Mike Snow started getting the word out on the radio, Facebook and Twitter.
"Between those three entities it was a good opportunity to tap into the generosity of this community," Beykirch said.
At the Weede Gymnasium, which is being used as a collection and storage facility, volunteers set up early to handle donations.
Pittsburg State University head football coach Tim Beck said student athletes and other volunteers started taking donations at about 8:30 a.m., and that supplies had been steadily flowing in since 9 a.m. As of 2 p.m. Tuesday volunteers had loaded 14 pallets of supplies. The gym will operate as a collection site through Thursday, and will store supplies indefinitely. Beck said people also can donate pet supplies.
The volunteers sorted all the items into categories to be re-boxed, and then loaded the boxes onto pallets to be taken by truck to Joplin.
"There's just a lot of people that want to help and want to do things," Beck said.
He continued, saying volunteers had wanted to go to Joplin to help directly, but that officials were not ready to receive them. "We decided this was the best way we could help."
President Steve Scott said in a release there was no question the university would help with the efforts.
“The scale of the disaster is such that emergency personnel and recovery crews are going to be on site for some time,” Scott said. “We’re working with emergency officials to provide assistance in any way possible, including the use of university housing for trained emergency personnel.”
