Jan. 4—Claremore/Rogers County Disaster Assistance will begin meeting as a long-term tornado recovery group in late January or early February.
CRCDA came together as an informal volunteer group just after the May 25 tornado struck Claremore. The group has connected disaster victims to resources and given out checks to help people cover needs like bills or groceries.
Debbie Long, mayor of Claremore and a founding member of CRCDA, announced at a pair of meetings in November that the group is plugging into Oklahoma Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster. Its focus will now shift to assisting victims over the next year and a half.
Long said the first meeting in late January or early February will kick off twice-monthly group meetings.
Anyone interested in joining should send an email to crcdacare@gmail.com, Long said.
“The first meeting, basically, we’re going to try to cover what does this group look like, how often do we want to meet, maybe a little bit of guidelines to the structure of how we’ll how we’ll actually run the meetings,” Long said.
Long said Catholic Charities of Eastern Oklahoma will serve as CRCDA’s case manager under a state contract.
At the group’s meetings, the case managers will present the cases of victims who applied for assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Case managers won’t reveal victims’ names, only what they need and how much their needs cost.
“The goal, then, is to take each case and between the group of people that show up at the table, we try to get all of their needs filled,” Long said.
Apart from CRCDA members and case managers, Long said members of VOAD partner organizations and disaster groups from other towns would attend meetings virtually and chip in where they can.
Long said Catholic Charities is training its case managers and likely will not offer FEMA cases at the first meeting; instead, she said the group will discuss a few lower-needs cases from people who applied for assistance through CRCDA.
She said CRCDA is meeting Josh Cantwell, GRAND Mental Health’s new chief executive officer, to discuss offering counseling support as part of CRCDA’s assistance.
People who want to donate to CRCDA can do so via the Tulsa Community Foundation at tinyurl.com/kn2nnrys.
Long said CRCDA does not have the funds to make every person who needs help whole, but it’s aiming to restore people’s lives back to “safe, secure and sanitary” conditions.
“I can’t stress enough how much we need funds,” Long said. “What we have will be able to help some, but we’re not going to be able to help a lot … I want to make sure we have enough money to at least help all of them to some degree.”