Reasor's $10K gift matched by generous Tulsans! & an F.A.Q.

These neighbors brought water.

This has been an incredible week, heart breaking and heart warming at the same time. I’ve spent much of the week talking to people on the phone who want to do something to help tornado victims in Moore, Shawnee, and other hard hit locales. “I want to do something but I feel so helpless,” said one kind businessman who wanted to give us a truckload of turkey sandwiches to deliver to Moore. We couldn’t accept them because they’re perishable, but he was interested in donating other items such as work gloves to help with the relief effort. If you have items you want to donate for tornado recovery, please take them to a Reasor’s store.


Reasor’s is one of our fantastic corporate partners and on Tuesday they announced that they would match up to $10,000 of gifts from the public. Tulsans, we made it! If you texted a $10 gift to STORM 80888, it just doubled in value!

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F.A.Q: Where to the donated items go?

Lots of folks who donated items for storm recovery wanted to know where they will be sent. Our warehouse at The Salvation Army (TSA) Tulsa Area Command is the largest TSA storage facility in Oklahoma, so we're going to keep the items we're collecting until they are requested by our staff working at storm recovery sites. We received word two days ago that too many things are being brought in to the recovery area and for agencies to stop sending things until it's better known what is needed.

We'll also need to sort the gifts we've received so we can easily access them to send. For example, if next week the only thing that is needed is work gloves, we don't want people on site to have to dig through other items to find them.

Volunteers helped collect items.

People also asked where our headquarters for storm recovery is. We call it an “Incident Command,” and currently we're using The Salvation Army Arkansas-Oklahoma Divisional Headquarters in Oklahoma City. We have a disaster logistics expert there who will be in charge of getting supplies that we collect in Tulsa to where they are needed in Moore.

Also, next week we hope to hear on-the-scene reports from fellow blogger Lindsay Sparks, who has been deployed to Incident Command on Sunday to work as a Public Information Officer there for seven days.

Have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend and thank you for all your support this week. -Sallie