Crews from Arkansas travel to Florida to assist with Hurricane Idalia

Little Rock, Arkansas – Volunteers and other teams are going to be extremely busy now that disaster Idalia has made landfall in Florida, helping residents who have been affected by the disaster.

To assist, some Arkansans are traveling to the most severely affected communities.

Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas is sending 60 line workers to Florida to assist with power restoration.

These workers waited in Alabama on Wednesday for permission to proceed on their trip to the Sunshine State.

“You don’t know what you’re gonna get when you get there and how bad it’s going to be,” Mike Matty with Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas said.

Matty is aware that hundreds are without electricity, though.

On Thursday, he and the rest of the team are to go to Madison, Florida, where they’ll begin working.

“We don’t know the roads, we don’t know where to go,” Matty said. “We’re going to have a leader from their organization show us where to go and what to do. They’ll say, ‘Ok, you start at this line, and this whole system is yours. You take care of it.'”

Matty claimed that his group is willing to go wherever assistance is required because they enjoy what they do.

“They begged to go on storms when they hit because first, you get to meet new people,” Matty said. “You get to see different areas and learn different things on the system.”

Additionally, volunteers from the Arkansas Red Cross are their route to offer support.

Red Cross volunteer Dana Dusha is getting ready for his second deployment.

Currently residing in Orlando, Florida, he plans to travel to one of the areas that has been impacted the hardest on Thursday to work in a shelter.

“Putting cots together, checking people in, registering them,” Dusha said. “Getting the food set up, the food preparation and the food disbursement, getting supplies out, monitoring.”

Although he is unsure of his assignment, he intends to assist for the next two weeks.

“I just want to help people and give back to those in need,” Dusha said.

More than 19,000 people are without electricity as of Wednesday night.