Four Online Campaigns Raising Funds For Hurricane Harvey Survivors

As Hurricane Harvey continues to wreak havoc in Texas, several individuals and organizations have come forth to help the survivors. The hurricane caused calamitous flooding in Houston over the weekend after storming the southeast coast of Texas.

Several online campaigns have been started to make sure that timely help can reach the survivors. American TV actor and Texas native Jensen Ackles, through his brewing company, Family Business Beer Company has partnered with non-profit Random Acts to help the people affected due to the flooding triggered by the hurricane. The brewery company is also located in Austin, Texas.

The campaign, started on crowdfunding platform Crowdrise, has mentioned a goal of collecting $100,000. It was able to raise $58,500 at the time of publishing this story.

Another online campaign has been started by a professional football team, Houston Texans. JJ Watt, one of the team members, took to Twitter on Sunday and wrote: “Recovery efforts from Hurricane Harvey will be massive. We must come together to help rebuild our communities.”

The campaign started on the website YouCaring raised $140,000 within the first hour of Watt's tweet for mending and reconstruction efforts.

A U.S. non-profit, GlobalGiving, has also set a goal of raising $2,000,000 to help the people in Houston and other surrounding areas. “Initially, the fund will help first responders meet survivors' immediate needs for food, fuel, clean water, hygiene products, and shelter. Once initial relief work is complete, this fund will transition to support longer-term recovery efforts run by local, vetted organizations in the Gulf Coast,” the nonprofit wrote referring to the online campaign.

The America Red Cross had assigned 23 volunteers to Texas and Louisiana to help with the rescue work even before Hurricane Harvey struck. "If it's anything like Katrina, and they're saying this is the worst since Katrina — and I have seen probably 40 of these things — I expect to see a lot of destruction," Zonia Ziada, an American Red Cross volunteer, told Eyewitness News. “They are opening mega-shelters for lots, lots of people to get out of the way of the storm.” The organization has also urged the online users to donate generously to the cause.

According to an early estimate from California-based analytics firm CoreLogic, the total reconstruction cost value because of the damage done due to the hammering rains in Texas would be somewhere around $40 Billion. “According to CoreLogic data analysis, 232,721 homes along the Texas coast with a reconstruction cost value (RCV) of approximately $39.6 billion are at potential risk of hurricane-driven storm surge damage from Hurricane Harvey, based on Category 3 predictions,” it said in a press statement published before the hurricane.

Several multinational organizations have also come to the fore to contribute for the flood-affected Texas. While tech giant Google contributed a significant amount by donating $250,000 to Red Cross, other organizations such as Caterpillar, ExxonMobil and the Western Union made donations of $300,000, $500,000 and $30,000 respectively to the American Red Cross, CNN reported.