Wow! What an amazing first few days! The amount of support and coordination that has happened within the first 2 days of this task force is nothing short of staggering! Since our first meeting on Friday night here are some of the things that have taken place:

• An administrative team was formed (see details below) with volunteers ready, willing and able to carry out their duties for the long haul.
• Thanks to the coordination of Jon Ogden, the Ruidoso chapter of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints has donated a beautiful, fully functional facility right off Highway 48 right in the center of the hardest hit areas. This facility will be the primary face of this recovery team. We will use this building for case management, emergency food distribution, media support, inter-agency communications and coordination, volunteer coordination, volunteer babysitting, you name it! Thanks Jon and the LDS church!
• Vic Currier and his donation support team have secured two large buildings directly across Highway 70 from Wal-Mart as a warehouse/distribution center. They then cleaned the facility and started receiving truckloads of donations by Saturday afternoon! Since then, they have done further enhancements, arranged help from the National Guard to help secure the facility, and even started to sort and catalog all the donations! Great work Vic and team! Vic has said that the warehouse will be open for donations drop off starting Monday, June 18th from 9am to 4pm.

“Please do not bring any more clothes, used mattresses or perishable items.” – Vic Currier

• We have decided on a short but descriptive name for the group: Little Bear Recovery Team. The official address of the website is now LittleBearRecovery.org
• We met as an admin team with Governor Martinez this afternoon (Sunday) at the new Recovery Center. She was very, very supportive of this team and has offered her support in many substantial ways. She also charged the whole team with making sure we keep good notes on the formation of this group so that she can use it elsewhere in the state during future incidents.

“Take good notes, we may need to duplicate this again soon in New Mexico…” – Governor Martinez

Meet the Admin Team Members

• Ryan Arnold – Facilitator
• Stephanie Harmon – Case Management
• Dr. Jon Ogden – Case Management
• Margo Mayo – Financial Manager
• Michael and Vicki Buckley – Volunteer Coordinators
• Minerva Davalos – Animal Coordinator / Sheriff’s Office Liaison
• Phillip and Laurel Appel – Information Technology / Internal Communications

There are a ton of other developments that we will be announcing over the next few days as we get all the details. But suffice it to say, this area is full of quality, selfless people who are willing to work hard to make this recovery a real benefit to the survivors as soon as possible.

Stay tuned for more information soon!