With this month's deadly wildfires in Gatlinburg, TN and the damaging winds of Hurricane Matthew on the Georgia coast in September, the August floods in Louisiana may be a distant memory for most Georgians.
That's not the case for Lt. Damon Migliore with Hall County Fire Services, however.
His hometown of Central, Louisiana was one of many areas devastated by floods late this past summer. He and his brother, along with fellow firefighters, have used their vacation days to travel to Central to help rebuild some of the houses in his former neighborhood.
"They haven't even really started [their recovery]," said Migliore. "As of last month, they finally started getting FEMA trailers in the neighborhoods so people could move out of their families' houses and into the trailers just so they could be close to their own homes."
Migliore estimated it may take another year to rebuild the homes that were damaged or destroyed by catastrophic flooding in Central alone.
"I still have friends and family that are living with each other - three families in one house," said Migliore. "There's still a great need."
Migliore said when his brother makes his next trip to Central later this month, he'll be carrying more than building supplies with him - he'll have nearly 150 stuffed animals and other toys collected by Zeta Tau Alpha sorority at Brenau University in Gainesville.
Migliore said his volunteer teams never thought about toys when they were coordinating relief efforts, but when he heard from ZTA Service Chair Ariel Buttram about her idea to collect stuffed animals for children who were flood victims, he knew the fit was perfect.
"When these flood waters came through, they didn't just rise - the rivers were running through the houses and taking everything with them," said Migliore. That included the toys that belonged to the children of affected families.
"Every month, we [the sorority] do a service project in the community. Sometimes we help with clean-up at a local shelter or we've helped with stocking shelves at the food pantry," said Buttram. "But when we were coming up with ideas at the beginning of the semester, I thought about collecting toys for needy children as one of our projects. One of our alums [alumnae] had heard about what the Lt. was doing, so she said maybe they might want the toys for the kids there."
Buttram, too, has family in Louisiana, so the idea struck a chord with her.
She and the other young women in the sorority decorated collection boxes and set them out around campus and a few other places in town during the month of November. On Friday, December 9, after final exams were over, Buttram and some of the other sorority members delivered their boxes to Migliore at Station #4 on McEver Road in Hall County.
Migliore said the toys will be delivered to Greenwell Springs Baptist Church, where volunteers with Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse will make sure they end up in the right hands this Christmas.
