Home Depot Foundation helps families in tornado-ravaged Griffin

GRIFFIN, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, volunteers from The Home Depot Foundation are spending their holiday in Griffin helping survivors of last week’s tornados clean up their properties.

Volunteers also are delivering 1,000 disaster relief kits and supplies, and they’re distributing 19 pallets of water.

The disaster relief kits, which include garbage bags, paper towels, cleaners, hand sanitizer, scour pads, gloves, and N95 masks in 5-gallon buckets, were assembled ahead of disaster season at the Home Depot’s distribution center in McDonough.

LaToya Jenkins looked on Monday as volunteers from The Home Depot Foundation went to work cleaning debris from her yard. She said she was inside her home with her husband and two of their five children when a tornado barreled down on her neighborhood.

“I was on the bed reading the Bible,” Jenkins said, “and the next thing I heard, my husband said, ‘Get down! It’s coming!’”

Her husband Tito said while his wife and children took cover, he pushed back against the frame of the front door trying to keep the wind from blowing it open.

“I’d rather it took me than them,” he said.

When it was all over, flying debris had broken their car windows, but their home had surprisingly little damage.

Their yard was a different story. Fallen trees and limbs were everywhere.

“I’m thankful for them,” Griffin said of the volunteers. “I’m real happy they came.”

“I really appreciate it,” said her husband. “Blessings don’t come often. I’m glad to be here.”

“We’re all family,” said Zina Kraatz, an employee at The Home Depot’s Griffin store and a longtime volunteer for The Home Foundation.

Kraatz said associates from her store, along with employees from Stores in Peachtree City, Fayetteville, Newnan and Lovejoy are all pitching in on their own time to give back.

“It’s why we do this,” she said. “It’s not for the accolades or the interviews or anything like that. It’s because it’s the right thing to do. And if you can, why wouldn’t you?”

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