Local volunteers report back from Southern tornado zone

An emergency response vehicle from the American Red Cross left Philadelphia today.  The vehicle is headed to tornado ravaged Alabama–where local staff and volunteers are already on the job. More than a dozen area volunteers have made the trip to provide mental health assistance as well as do damage assessment, client casework, public affairs support and logistics.  That includes Linda VanWagenen who’s from Moorestown, New Jersey.  “I arrived on Saturday morning and what that is is the teams–usually the first teams in an area and we’re assigned to go out to different areas to assess the damage in those areas and that kind of determines where a lot of our feeding operations go into,” said VanWagenen.VanWagenen said she’s gone out on hurricane assignments, but this is her first tornado disaster.  She said pictures can’t show the destruction and the pain.