More information about the Holston Valley UU Church tragedy

Dear Readers,
Here is more information about the Holston Valley UU Church situation, in an excerpt from another note from the Rev. Christine Riley. Some of you have sent cash donations; thank you so much! Others might find it possible to meet some of the other needs Christine mentions.

She writes:
Basically we lost everything in the RE Classrooms and our kitchenette area.

Some books and some most of the curriculums were in the DRE's office in the main church building and are fine. SO...luckily, her brand new computer was not in the RE Building...(which this congregation fondly called "THE REZ"--RE Zone).

We lost ALL classroom furniture. We lost All classroom art supplies (markers,pens, papers, glues, construction paper..etc, etc). ...while this sounds trivial it will amt. to thousands to replace and is needed soon.

Some area (think 90 min to one hour or more away) DRE's are talking about what they have that is extra, not needed, and will be in touch later this week.

Our Buddhist Sangha Group met there too, for years and years. They lost their entire library...and all their Buddhist, Yoga, meditation tapes. They are heart broken about the loss of their library texts and videos.

We are in the beginning stages of doing a loss inventory for each room....and hope to have it by the week's end. It is just really hard to recall each single item....what was in drawers,cupboards, etc. I have asked the DRE and teachers to begin listing things...mentally walk through the rooms, then wait a day and re-visit their lists to see if there are other things that come to mind.

We lost a big screen TV that we used for youth and adult RE, a DVD player, at least two VHS players...and today someone remembered that there was another TV stored in a closet there, too. At this point I know of two CD-stereo type units that were lost.

We were able to have ONE cabinet pulled out at the beginning of the fire response...with some of our brand new Spirit Plays and their individual baskets and manipulatives....sadly most were totally destroyed...saved a few things only.

The cabinet itself was a beautiful piece of carpentry done by some men in the congregation, was solid wood and on rollers. It is now in a garage at a member's home and we will see if it can be saved...when we priced buying one this fall the cost for it alone was over $1000....so we are hoping that it can be restored.

I am thinking that $, art supplies, books...all would be wonderfully appreciated.
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Let's see if we can help out in this sad situation. Let the HVUU folks know you heard about it from a UU blog!