4 from Minnesota Salvation Army headed to Louisiana to help after hurricane

Four Minnesota women are the first Salvation Army Northern Division volunteers heading to Louisiana, and more are expected in the coming weeks to help in the wake of Hurricane Ida.

"We expect to have teams down there for months. This is not something that will end when these folks come back," said division spokesman Dan Furry.

On Sunday, the women headed south to relieve Salvation Army volunteers who have been working the past few weeks. They will return to Minnesota in two weeks, when the next rotation of Northern Division volunteers will take over.

Rebecca Snapp, director of community engagement at the Salvation Army in Rochester, is on her first deployment, along with veteran volunteers Susan Marsh and Marie Putnam, as well as Anne McGuire, who are all from the Twin Cities.

Putnam has been busy volunteering with the Salvation Army this year, traveling to the Red River Valley during flood season and the Superior National Forest this summer to help during the ongoing, but now mostly contained, wildfires.

Furry said Putnam has been on a half-dozen long-distance deployments around the region. She and the three other volunteers will be working at the mobile feeding unit stationed in Gonzales, a midway point between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

As soon as Ida hit, the Northern Division began assembling teams to relieve the Salvation Army teams that were the first to respond, Furry said.

He said there is no such thing as "short-term disasters" and the Northern Division will help as long as needed because the damage wreaked by Ida is second only to Katrina.

Ida caused substantial flooding and power failures. In response, the Salvation Army deployed 38 mobile feeding units to serve areas most affected. So far the organization has served 389,000 meals from nearly 200 trained disaster workers that have provided 12,000 hours of service.

Kim Hyatt • 612-673-4751