The town of West was recently hit with a disaster. A fertilizing plant exploded killing 15 and wounding 200 more. The explosion destroyed much of the land and eviscerated homes of the citizens of West. The explosion destroyed many homes, and did moderate damage to the ones that were not destroyed. Freshman Jesus Lira was one among many of the volunteers who went to West wanting to help out.

“I went with my church because we wanted to help them out. We brought food and supplies,” Lira said.

West is in need of supplies since the explosion ruined many of the supplies that they had. That is why many groups came to West with donated goods to help West revive. The volunteers had a specific assembly line method to help get the supplies off the trucks and readily available.

“First someone would take supplies from the trucks and hand it to the next person, who would then separate the supplies into different categories,” Lira said. “They had the categories all separated out so that the people who needed it could find it easily.”

All the volunteers are contributing much to West. Bringing supplies and get them readily available to the people is not the only way to be of help to West, because coming to West is a donation in it’s self.

“There were a lot of volunteers there at West. The organization FEMA said that for every volunteer that was there, they would donate a certain amount of money to West,” Lira said.

The people of West are still struggling to piece everything back together, and that is what the volunteers are trying to help them do.

“The people of West didn’t seem sad. They were just wanting to get past it and move on with their lives,” Lira said.

West is still in dire straits. So anyone wanting to donate to West can send supplies to:

Office of the Governor

Texas Disaster Relief Fund
P.O. Box 12878
Austin, TX 78711-2878
United States