I am not sure where to start or what info you are interested in so I will just start from the beginning. My wife and I sat and watched the devastation from the comfort of our home. We watched legacy news and social media. We realized quickly that North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia were hit hard. As the days went by, we kept feeling a weight on our hearts and a calling from God to do something. In 2018, while my family and I were attending the Missouri Sheriff’s Conference, our house had an electrical short and burnt completely down. We lost everything we owned and only had what was in our travel bags at the hotel with us. We left the hotel and drove home to witness our personal devastation.
We lost material things, we didn’t lose our family and we didn’t lose the whole community we love. We lived in a rented camper for a couple months before finding a rental house. We eventually rebuilt our house and moved on. We kept having the feeling of what we could do from Missouri, especially since we didn’t know anyone from those areas. We were standing in our front yard when my wife looked at our camper and said “we could take someone our camper to use”. That night, I made a Facebook post on my personal page asking if anyone had family or first responders in the area that needed my camper that could sleep 7-9 people. We offered to deliver it as soon as we could. Days went by and no one took us up. As our community saw the post, they began to ask if they could help and offered to send donations to the area with me if I took the camper to anyone. I asked my staff if they had any contacts in the area that could be reached out to. With our community begging to help and God placing the delivery of our camper on our hearts, I decided to have our dispatch center send each agency a message offering our camper and to deliver supplies for staff at any Sheriff’s Office.
We got our first request for items from the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office. Their request was for hygiene products, socks, shirts, police gear to name a few as they explained many in their agency had lost their homes, including all their law enforcement gear. I offered my personal camper and we were advised they had a need for it. This began day one of our agency posting publicly that we were now going to the devastated areas of North Carolina to deliver supplies designated for law enforcement and first responders. Our office began to be flooded with requested donations from our community. Our neighboring Sheriff’s Offices of Cass County, Henry County and local Police Departments began to bring law enforcement related equipment like duty gear, uniforms, handcuffs and body armor. Shortly after, our second agency, Madison County Sheriff’s Office, gave us a list of requested items for their staff who had lost or damaged homes. And then our third agency, the Yancey County Sheriff’s Office had a specific request for propane stoves, cold weather clothes, flashlights, batteries. We posted each agency's request and our community and surrounding communities responded. Thousands of dollars worth of supplies were delivered to our Sheriff’s Office warehouse within three days of our Facebook post. Gift cards and cash were donated to help purchase requested items that were needed. My staff didn’t blink an eye and everyone including Communication Officers, Detention Officers, Patrol Division, Investigation Division and Administrative Staff pitched in to help receive, organize and load trailers.
We loaded my camper full of supplies, a 20ft car hauler, and a 16ft enclosed trailer full with brand new supplies. Even the use of the trailers were donated by members of our community. After members of our community showed up to pray for our safety in our travels, we left Butler Mo on Tuesday October 15th at 3pm. Our crew for delivery consisted of members from the Bates County Sheriff’s Office, Butler Police Department, Cedar County Sheriff’s Office and City of Adrian Public Works. Because we did not want to use a county owned vehicle to pull my camper, my Under Sheriff pulled the camper with his personal truck. We drove eleven hours to our first stop in Crossville Tennessee where we arrived at 2am on the 16th and got hotel rooms for everyone. We were up again at 8am and on the road for our first drop off at the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office in Asheville. We arrived at 2:30pm. This was the location my camper was being delivered to. While there we met some amazing people who had an unbelievably positive attitude. I know that they had worked nonstop for 3 weeks and had to be tired. I learned here that this Sheriff’s Office still had 5 deputies without a place to live and that they would be the ones utilizing the camper. It was also my understanding that this agency lost approximately 25 of their patrol vehicles and equipment to go with it. Together we unloaded our first trailer load of supplies and then headed off to our second location.
The Yancey County Sheriff’s Office directed our delivery to the Fire Department in Burnsville. We arrived at the Fire Department around 4pm. We unloaded half of our second trailer with the specific equipment they had requested. This area was extremely busy with recovery drop offs and locals picking up and waiting for supplies. We were on the road and headed to the Madison County Sheriff’s Office with our final drop off. We arrived at the Madison Sheriff’s Office around 530pm. We unloaded the final portion of our deliveries. Here we met Sheriff Buddy Harwood. Sheriff Harwood had already left the office but insisted that we not leave until he could come meet each person and shake their hands. I learned of his county’s devastation and the fact that multiple cities in his county were completely destroyed. He lost one of his Majors in the flood waters trying to get to the office to help others in the community. She gave her life being a true hero. His Major had worked for him for 16 years and while he held his composure I could see the pain he had in losing her. To prove the world is small and that what we were doing was God’s work, Sheriff Harwood asked us how far Bates County was from Joplin Missouri. He shared that in 2011 he took two 53 ft tractor trailer loads of supplies to Joplin to aid in the recovery after the Tornado ripped through town. We both agreed that it was truly God’s work that here we are now in 2024 and Missouri was sending supplies back to his community. Sheriff Harwood and his staff came together with my staff and we prayed as a group for his community and our safe travels back to Missouri. We left Madison County and stayed the night in the Pigeon Forge area. We left first thing Thursday morning and arrived back in Bates County around 10pm.
We left Madison County, our hearts filled with pride from what our community put together in 3 days and at the same time we left with our hearts heavy for the communities who lost so much. We felt pride to see our fellow Law Enforcement and First Responders putting their communities first and working without days off or homes of their own to go home to.
We got to see firsthand “Appalachia Strong” in action. We met great people along the way, people in the area being grateful for all the help. We saw a little bit of the devastation but remained in the areas that were safe to travel in knowing that the Sheriff’s in those communities knew what was best for their county needs in that short window we were there. Our goal was to deliver supplies but our hearts wanted to stay and help with calls for service or search efforts. Each one of us was hoping someone would say, “We need extra manpower to go here or there to help in this operation”. We would rely on God to show us how we would go from a supply drop to physically working to make a difference in that area.
Our community is a small one of only 17,000 people, but we sure do have big hearts. We received donations from all over like Ft Scott Kansas, Overland Park Kansas, Lees Summit, Grain Valley, Cass County, and Henry County. We received donations from businesses, from Churches and from people in general. We will truly never know how far and wide our donations came from. We just know that every 4 hours we were being told that our lobby was full and we needed to transfer the stuff to our warehouse. Locally I have received a lot of praise and recognition for putting this together. The people who need the recognition are the ones who donated and paid for all the stuff, the people who worked on their days off and a holiday to get it organized by county, loaded and delivered in three days. While we took 12 people to make the delivery, I have almost 70 employees who worked hard to make it happen. Employees that didn’t go, worked extra shifts to cover the ones that did, dispatchers who received the information of request and what agencies requested. I had command staff that worked patrol shifts to help cover empty shifts. I had command staff who used his personal vehicle to pull the camper. Our community donated money to cover the hotels and food expenses for the volunteers and baked snacks for them.
I am proud of this community and the ones that surround us. This is the Greatest Community in this whole world and while it was a few trailers of supplies, I feel it was what God called us to do as a community!
Thank you to everyone who continues to support the Sheriff's Office and each other in the often times crazy world we live in.
- Bates County Sheriff Chad Anderson
