“I just figured I’d do what I can do,” the man said.
Over the weekend, tornadoes slammed through the South and Midwest, and one man is doing his best to help those affected.
He drove to Mayfield, Kentucky, to erect a barbeque and feed the crowd.
“This man drove half an hour with a grill and a truckload of food and parked right in the middle of #Mayfield, Kentucky,” Victor Ordonez captioned his tweet.
“I know they don’t have no electricity, so that means they don’t have no electric, no restaurants, no running water, so I just figured I’d do what I can do,” the man who is identified as Jim Finch, said. “Show up with some food and some water.”
Another tweet showed a 360-degree view of the region while buildings were being demolished.
“This was the scene right before Jim Finch, the man in the video, set up his grill,” Ordonez wrote. “There was later Church service in that parking lot across from him.”
The efforts of Finch were praised.
“That panorama is horrific,” someone wrote. “Jim Finch brings light. I am sure the church service did too and so do you for documenting it.”
“What a blessing he is. He is warming hearts and bellies with his act of kindness,” another person wrote.
“Such a kind human being. I am humbled by his generosity of spirit!” someone else commented.
Tornadoes wreaked havoc on Mayfield in particular. More than 100 people were inside a candle business in the town when it collapsed, according to Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.
“That will be, we believe, the largest site, the worst place of loss,” he told Weekend TODAY, estimating that 40 people had been rescued from the plant during a press conference on Saturday.
According to the governor, at than 60 people have perished and more than 100 are still missing.
Joe Ward, who started working at the plant a few weeks ago to earn money so he and his fiancée could buy a house for their combined eight children, did not survive.
Kyanna Parsons-Perez is one of the people who managed to escape the candle factory.
“It was extremely scary,” she said on Weekend TODAY. “Everything happened so fast. They had us in the area where you go in case there’s a storm, and we were all there. Then, the lights got to flickering, and then all of a sudden, we felt a gust of — we could feel the wind. Then, my ears kind of started popping, you know, as they would as if you’re on a plane.”
Even in the midst of sadness, there have been rays of optimism. In addition to Finch’s efforts, an altar at the First Christian Church of Mayfield with a carving of Michelangelo’s The Last Supper escaped damage despite the rest of the church being destroyed.
