Texans Helping Texans: Grand Prairie Companies Team Up To Help Harvey Evacuees

A Grand Prairie towing company and a local nonprofit organization are teaming up to help the people displaced by unprecedented flooding in Houston.

Dave’s Hi-Way Wrecker plans to load a 30-foot trailer with supplies for evacuees making refuge in Dallas and deliver it to the Red Cross Tuesday. The idea started with a Facebook post over the weekend, when Hurricane Harvey made landfall and continued dumping torrential rain up the Gulf Coast.

“It’s kind of exploded,” said Jimmy Gladney, who’s worked with the towing service for 10 years. “We’ve had a lot of people call us and contact us.”

One of those people was Cameron Gray, who is donating pallets of clothes through his nonprofit group, Orphans of the World. The organization has been delivering clothes, food and supplies to people in need around the world since 1985. They’ve focused primarily on Central America.

“But when we have a local tragedy like this, we’re always willing to chip in and help out,” Gray said. “We’re very pleased to be able to provide this help.”

Gray plans to send one truckload of supplies to Houston, where thousands are taking shelter around the city. The goal is to send a load each day to Dallas, which is expecting “thousands upon thousands” more people as it opens the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center to evacuees Tuesday.

“Bring water, bring toothpaste, bring diapers, bring clothes, bring shoes, bring everything,” Gray said. “They have nothing. We’ve got almost 5,000 [evacuees] coming here to Dallas with nothing but the shirt on their back.”

Gladney said his towing service wants to help because it’s “the Texas way.”

“It’s anything we can do to help our community and people who aren’t in our community,” he said. “We look at it as, everyone that’s affected by the hurricane is our family and we need to help them.”

For Orphans of the World, it’s just the right thing to do.

“We do it because we love our fellow man,” Gray said. “We do it because it’s a responsibility that all of us have to take care of each other. It’s when we give that we receive.”

The companies are looking for volunteers to assist in loading trucks and make complete their mission.

Looking to help the cause? Orphans of the World is located at 422 North Street in Grand Prairie. Dave’s Hi-Way Wrecker can be found at 1509 East Main Street in Grand Prairie.