Sandy touches Atlanta charities, churches, corporations

Atlanta-area corporations, nonprofits and other organizations reacted quickly Monday and Tuesday to help cities and towns in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast pick up, mop up and begin putting Hurricane Sandy behind them.

Georgia Power dispatched more than 300 people in bucket trucks and other vehicles before the storm even made landfall, said John Craft, a spokesman for the utility. One group, which hit the road Sunday, got as far as Richmond, Va., where workers remained until the storm passed to the north, he said. A second group left Monday, spent the night in Raleigh, N.C., and was northbound Tuesday morning, he said.

The utility, which serves all but four Georgia counties, will likely send a third group, he said.

“This was an incredible storm, and there are an incredible number of outages out there,” he said.

Home Depot moved quickly, too. The Atlanta-based retail giant so far has sent more than 2,000 truckloads of equipment and supplies to affected areas to help with hurricane recovery efforts, said Doug Spiron, the company’s emergency response captain.

The company also is sending workers from unaffected areas to work at stores in the path of the storm and also to volunteer in cleanup areas in those communities.

“This will be a months-long process,” he said. “This is an expansive and very devastating storm.”

Red Cross workers from Atlanta and across Georgia joined a national effort to help Sandy’s victims, said Ruben Brown, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Atlanta chapter of the American Red Cross. The Atlanta organization sent two teams of volunteers north on Tuesday, he said.

Religious organizations also hustled to feed the hungry and comfort the frightened.

Methodist churches across Georgia began making “flood buckets” destined for points north, said Mike Selleck, director of connectional ministries for the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church. Each 5-gallon bucket contains bleach, soap and other cleaning materials, plus scrubbers, he said. Some churches assemble the buckets; others made donations to a national effort to make the buckets, he said.

Methodists, he said, also are standing by, waiting for the call to do the heavy work of cleaning up after a flood.

“We’ll be there for the next 10 years or whatever it takes,” he said. “We’re the long-haul denomination.”

The Georgia Baptist Convention planned to send crews to southern New Jersey on Wednesday to feed people and begin cleaning up after Sandy. The recovery effort “will go on for I don’t know how long,” said Eddie Oliver, a convention communications specialist.

Locally, the Salvation Army was poised to act, too.

“We’ve been getting ready,” said Lillian Harding, communications director for the Salvation Army of Metropolitan Atlanta. “We’re just waiting on the call.”