Chip Pickering (Photo Provided)

PARKERSBURG — A local volunteer from the American Red Cross of the Ohio River Valley is in Florida for disaster relief from Hurricane Helene.

Chip Pickering was deployed at Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, where shelters were established prior to Hurricane Helene touching land last week in Florida as a Category 4 storm.

More than 120 people have been killed, according to the Associated Press, and the destruction has stretched northward including into South and North Carolina where more than 30 people were killed near Asheville. The town of Chimney Rock, N.C., was destroyed.

At least nine people were killed in Tampa, Fla., about 200 miles southeast of Tallahassee, mostly from drowning, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said.

“It came right up through to the east of Tallahassee,” Pickering, a veteran of numerous relief operations through the Red Cross, said.

Mary Tanner Jerome Tanner, of Tallahassee, sit inside an evacuation shelter ahead of Hurricane Helene, expected to make landfall here today, in Leon County, Fla., Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Pickering is a shelter coordinator and arrived in Florida last week with a pre-landing contingent of Red Cross volunteers who got the shelters ready for when they were needed. Pickering is with Seth Kenefick, a Red Cross disaster program specialist from Steubenville, who also was deployed through the Ohio River Valley Chapter.

Residents from near Tampa have been in the shelters and will remain until they can get closer to their homes to assess the damage, Pickering said. Much depends on when power and water is restored for when people can go to their homes and determine if they can be repaired or are not salvageable, he said.

Some progress has been made in Florida, he said. Power is being restored to the millions without electricity.

“People are starting to go back to their homes,” Pickering said.

The storm surge was from 10 to 20 feet, forcing people out of their homes, Pickering said.

“It’s just not survivable,” he said.

Besides the damage from the winds and the force of the water, the surge has left several feet of sand in the homes, Pickering said.

“The big challenge is can we dig those out,” he said.

Pickering is on a two-week deployment. Shelters and operations are continually adjusted as recovery progresses, he said.

When he will be relieved depends on whether a replacement is available and what aid is needed elsewhere in the disaster, Pickering said.

The destruction is massive across the states, said Sharon Kesselring, executive director of the Red Cross Ohio River Valley Chapter. The chapter is organizing volunteers for relief services and deployments are going to be made for several weeks to come, she said.

The priority at this time is sheltering and feeding the displaced residents, although relief efforts depend much on communications and being able to access the area, Kesselring said. Things can change from one moment to the next, according to Kesselring.

“It’s amazing how quickly we can pivot to make things happen,” she said.

The level of destruction is going to make it difficult for volunteers, too, she said.

“This deployment is going to have major hardships,” Kesselring said.

The Red Cross also is responding to the effects from Helene in Eastern West Virginia where damages from wind and rain have occurred in the counties along the Virginia border, Kesselring said. The governor of West Virginia last week issued a State of Preparedness for 22 counties.

About 600 meals have been prepared for the area around Mercer County, she said.

“We’ve been pretty busy,” she said.

More than 1,400 Red Cross volunteers from across the country have so far responded, assisting with feeding, health and mental health services and delivering relief supplies, Kesselring said.

The Red Cross as of Sunday night was managing or supporting about 70 shelters for more than 2,600 disaster survivors, an increase of 600 people from overnight in Georgia and North Carolina shelters, Kesselring said.

Jess Mancini can be reached at jmancini@newsandsentinel.com