Panhandle disaster relief team helping residents impacted by tornadoes in Norman

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - A Panhandle disaster relief team has been deployed once again, this time closer to home.

Paramount Baptist Church works with Texas Baptist Men to send volunteers out whenever and wherever disaster strikes.

They’ve been all over the U.S. recently from Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and even helping those in the Panhandle from damaging wind.

Currently the team is in Norman, Oklahoma helping residents impacted by recent tornadoes.

“They’re just a blessing for them to come and help us in the way they do,” said David Wells, disaster relief director, TBM.

The 11-person team is focusing on cutting down damaged trees.

“We walk on a property and you think my goodness where do we start? We just get started and we realize what a great job it’s going to be and then a few hours later or a day later, the area looks a whole lot different, it looks clean and it looks livable again,” said Ernest McNabb, blue cap, TBM.

McNabb says the damage in Norman varies.

“We worked one house which had about 70 or 80 trees around the house, it was all crumbled up and down and they lost one shingle and across the street was a real large home, that is completely destroyed,” said McNabb.

TBM also says some of the jobs are just too big for residents to do them or too expensive.

“The one bid on one of the properties was $100,000, so you can imagine what kind of damage that was around the property, so we want to show them we are here to help, and serve Christ and do what we can to help our people that’s having these disasters happen to them,” said McNabb,

Besides helping clean up, the team has another mission, to deliver help, hope and healing to those affected.

“It’s good to be able to serve these people to help them out, it’s a blessing to us, as we are a blessing to them, it’s kind of a mutual deal,” said McNabb.

The Panhandle team will continue working in Norman until next Thursday, then they will make the journey home and wait for the next deployment.

Copyright 2023 KFDA. All rights reserved.