NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (KNOP) - A truckload of emergency supplies was bound for Colorado on Tuesday after volunteers in Dawson County spent Monday afternoon emptying a local church warehouse to help families impacted by recent wildfires and flooding.

A U-Haul packed with cleaning kits, school supplies, and handmade quilts departed Gothenburg on Tuesday morning for a seven-hour journey to Pueblo, Colorado, where the United Way will manage the distribution of the materials.

The shipment originated from a 30-by-30-foot storage facility at Trinity Lutheran Church. The site is one of 17 regional disaster response warehouses across the country operated by the North American Lutheran Church.

The regional hubs are designed to stage durable, nonperishable goods in strategic locations, allowing volunteers to bypass the logistics delays often associated with national distribution centers.

“The intent is to have the stuff here so that it can be delivered as quickly as possible,” said the Rev. Jeff Cottingham, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church. “In the case of all the fires and the flooding in Colorado, there’s been a tremendous need there. The warehouse in Colorado has already been empty. And so we, being the neighboring one, are going to send a lot of our materials there as well.”

The Gothenburg warehouse holds inventory designed to cover a six-to-seven-hour driving radius, which has previously allowed local volunteers to deliver supplies to Omaha within 23 hours of a tornado outbreak, and to support flood-damaged towns in northeastern Nebraska and northwestern Iowa.

The facility was filled to more than 90% capacity before Monday’s loading began at 4 p.m. To clear the shelves and pack the U-Haul in the summer heat, the congregation called on partners from outside their own church.

“While it may be a ministry of our denomination, we have stuff from other churches in town,” Cottingham said. “We try to make it as big a community deal as possible. This is what America is all about: neighbors helping neighbors.”

Trinity Lutheran Church plans to immediately begin restocking the facility, which maintains a target goal of keeping 500 cleaning buckets on hand.

Organizers said those wishing to donate or view the specific list of accepted supplies can find more information under the disaster response tab on the denomination’s homepage.

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