The tornado that tore a path through St Louis last week has sparked ongoing community relief efforts on the city’s north and west sides.
The organizers of these efforts say they couldn’t wait for local authorities to mobilize. Ohun Ashe, founder of For the Culture, began working with Kayla Reed of Action St. Louis — and by Saturday, as St. Louis awoke to the devastation, the community organizers were on the streets with dozens of volunteers.
Soon, the numbers swelled to hundreds.
“We made the decision right there that we were going to do something,” Ashe said, describing her and Reed’s experience of the storm’s aftermath on Thursday’s St. Louis on the Air. “We rode around for a little bit, and we gave what we had in my car away. We met up at the [O’Fallon Park] Rec Center, and some more people were coming with donations. So we went right back out into the neighborhood until it got dark.”
That night, volunteers set up a barbecue pit. It was a moment when Ashe realized they had become the neighborhood’s primary relief effort.
“We were feeding the community that night, getting resources, collecting things, but being out there showed us that this was going to be an effort that was going to take a lot,” she said, “and it was going to be long term.”
By Monday, Ashe, along with Reed and Action St. Louis, officially unveiled the People’s Response Hub at the O'Fallon Park Recreation Center YMCA.
The first night, the callout for volunteers received 500 responses. The next day, they had 3,000, and 5,000 came the day after that.
“Right now,” Reed said, “we're servicing about 500 people through the line, residents who are coming to pick things up, and we're getting double the number of cars to drop things off. We're feeding people lunch and dinner. It's morphed into a really huge apparatus.”
The tornado carved a wide path through the city’s north and west sides. Aaron Williams, president of 4TheVille in the Ville neighborhood, worked with local organizations and officials to create a tornado recovery site at 4144 Dr. Martin Luther King Drive.
The day after the tornado hit, “We bought three chainsaws and we hit the street,” Williams said. “We were just walking through the neighborhood around Newstead (Avenue), just cutting trees and power lines and light poles for people, just so they can get off their block to get whatever they need. While we were doing all of that, more people started calling us, saying, ‘How can we help?’”
Both relief hubs are still in operation and open for volunteers and contributions. Here’s how you can support St. Louis' tornado relief efforts — and get help if you need it
To hear the full interview with Kayla Reed, Ohun Ashe and Aaron Williams about the ongoing relief operations in the city’s north and west sides, and how people can volunteer and contribute resources to those efforts, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
