Local employees and students come together to support Elkhorn residents

• Video shows Elkhorn homes, volunteers from College of St. Mary's and Home Depot.
• Volunteers across Omaha are support residents who lost their homes due to storms last week.
• According to the National Weather Service, there were nine tornadoes in the Omaha area on Friday lasting for 4 hours and 51 minutes.

BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
“This is important because this is our community,” said Will Davis.

Will Davis, the store manager at the Home Depot on 144th and Maple says he and his coworkers are stepping in to assist their community.

“Community that together, after this devastation trying to help salvage whatever personal blinds the homeowners are one and just trying to help volunteer and speed up the recovery effort,” said Davis.

Davis says there’s about 50 volunteers and they’re working to clear out as many houses as possible with the help of other neighbors. Davis says the homeowner of the house behind him was told they only had three hours to get their belongings before it would be demolished.

“Part of Home Depot’s values is giving them back and taking care of her people so we wanna make sure that we’re out there supporting those people that are in our community because they are our neighbors,” said Davis.

Home Depot is not the only group of volunteers looking to assist. One nursing student at College of St. Mary’s says she’s here and ready to help however she can.

“Came to pick up the trash and some of the personal belongings. I think that was probably one of the hardest things to choose out. It was which ones were like not important,” said Leslie Velez.

Leslie Velez says the homeowner of the one of the houses she’s been cleaning didn’t speak much English.

“I feel like it’s important to come see like who you can help even with the smallest thing like translating,” said Velez.

This is Velez’s first tornado, she moved to Omaha for school but she says she feels for their neighbors.

“Everyone is just trying to support the people that are coming by to pick up their things. There’s a lot of tears a lot of people they just need a lot of support,” said Velez.