A Texan firefighter and former Chatham-Kent native who is helping with the hurricane efforts has surpassed his GoFundMe goal by nearly $2,000.
Kyle Parry works for the fire department in Lumberton, Texas (just outside of Houston) and has been helping with the evacuation and cleanup efforts for Hurricane Harvey. His sister Natalie created a GoFundMe page to help Kyle Parry's family recover from flood damage at his home and to help other victims of the flood. In only five days, the page has raised $9,615, which is nearly $2,000 past the original goal.
"It's an absolute shock to think that there are that many people out there that are willing to help and I can never thank everyone enough for everything that they did. The generosity and the messages that I've received has been absolutely incredible," explains Parry, who lost his own home to the flooding in Texas while he was helping others in his community.
Parry says they're now in the stages of clean-up in his community as the flood begins to improve.
"We've put the wedding on pause right now, just because I still have weeks and weeks of work left with my fire department trying to get everybody back into their homes and trying to help people get cleaned up and things like that. [We're] trying to figure what our next step is," says Parry.
He plans to take the GoFundMe page down sometime in the next few days, since he has already surpassed his goal. He adds that he wants to donate at least half of the money to victims of the flood.
"My concern right now is trying to help everybody in my community try and get their lives back together and back in order. I guess it's not really about myself, it's about everyone else," he says.
Parry also plans to partner with the owner of Blazin BBQ Ribhouse in Chatham, Jeff Jenkins, to host a fundraiser in Chatham-Kent for the victims of the flood sometime in the near future.