Six Months, Nearly Half a Million Dollars: Y'all Squad's Mid-Year Impact, Because of You
- Public Relations
- 19 hours ago
- 11 min read
Dozens of communities reached. Nearly thirty-four thousand miles traveled. All made possible by you.
When we look back at the first half of 2026, what we see isn’t a map or a spreadsheet; it’s faces. A veteran standing in the rubble of his home, the car his late mother left him gone with it. A family huddled around their two-year-old as the floor lifted beneath them. A mother grieving a loss none of us can imagine. And behind every one of those moments is you.
Thanks to your support, Y'all Squad's mid-year impact has reached nearly $500,000, helping families and veterans, funding temporary housing and rebuilding, clearing debris, delivering emergency supplies and food, supporting an animal shelter's recovery, and placing 2,500 weather radios into the hands of people who needed them most. These are just a few of the stories your generosity made possible.
Union Lake, Michigan
On March 6, an EF3 tornado tore into Union Lake, just outside Union City. Tim, watching the radar from an hour away, warned everyone he could, including his longtime friends Scott and Kari, but for people down at the lake who’d heard the storm was headed elsewhere, there was almost no time to react. “They had heard the storm was going to Athens. So people were down here thinking it was all clear,” Tim said.
The physical damage was devastating, but the human cost was unimaginable. Tim’s friends Scott and Kari tried to take shelter with two other friends in their home’s bathroom. Scott survived, but in the chaos, his wife Kari and one of their friends lost their lives.
“It’s just the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Tim said after 35 years as a storm spotter.
Nearby, the storm also claimed the life of Josh’s mother, Penny Jo. She’d lived in Union City her whole life, raised four boys there, and kept her own bird sanctuary, known around town for loving animals every bit as much as she loved people. “She was just a well-loved person,” Josh told us, “the kind of person who’d give you the shirt off her back.”
The loss these families experienced is impossible to fix. But thanks to your incredible generosity, we were able to provide a $15,000 donation to Scott’s family, and another $15,000 donation to Josh’s family. This storm changed everything for the people of Union Lake, but it also proved that they are never alone. As Josh put it: “It’s life-changing for people... it’s just life-changing, and it’s awesome what organizations like you guys do.”
Lake Village, Indiana
“This is the life-threatening storm that’s headed towards you right now,” Ryan warned live on air as a wedge tornado closed in on Lake Village the night of March 10. “All these people out here are in the most dangerous situation they have ever been in, in their entire lives.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. For Chris, a lifelong resident who serves in the military, an ordinary Tuesday became a 90-second fight for survival. A garbage can flying down his driveway took out his truck window, his van window, and caved his garage door into a V. Then, moments after the hail stopped, a tree came down and tore away 35 feet of his house, pinning him inside his truck until a neighbor arrived with a saw to cut him free. He lost all three of his vehicles that day, including his late mother’s Mustang. “It’s basically like a 16-year-old that got his license that morning,” he said of starting over with nothing. “Hey, go start your life.”
Down the road, Steve, an Army veteran, watched the sky turn black from his front door. “I see a dumpster fly in front of me,” he said, and ran for the bedroom just as the ceiling dropped and the roof tore away. He made it into a closet, held a shirt to his face to breathe through the insulation filling the air, and waited it out. “Twenty seconds, it was over,” he said. “But that’s the longest twenty seconds I can tell you.”
“We walked outside, I couldn’t believe the damage,” Steve said afterward. His front door had been wedged straight into the drywall. His vehicle, like everything else, was gone. “I don’t know what to do right now,” he said. “I’ve never been through this before... it’s just devastating all the way around.”
We’d staged in South Bend before the outbreak even began, and once the storm passed, our team told local officials at the Township Community Center we wanted to help however we could. “You guys were persistent,” Lori, a local firefighter and nurse, remembered. “You said, let us help you. Let us help you, help them.” She told us what the community needed: chainsaws, generators, and heaters. With the cold setting in, there was no waiting around. “It wasn’t like, okay, we’ll get back to you in three to five business days,” she said. “It was let’s go now. We’ll go to Home Depot, we’ll go wherever, and we’ll go get it. It happened just like that.” Because of you, we delivered over $23,000 in supplies and handed Chris and Steve each a $15,000 recovery check, on the spot.
Springtown, Texas & Enid, Oklahoma
“You cannot walk, you gotta run as fast as you can to your safe spot,” Ryan warned viewers live on air as a tornado closed in on Springtown, Texas, on April 25. Whitney and her teenage daughter had moved into their duplex just three weeks earlier. That Saturday started like any other. They’d just gotten a new puppy, and the morning was about walks and figuring out weekend plans. They were completely unaware of the massive storm headed their way.
“It happened rather fast, like everything just started shaking,” Whitney said. “My head hurt so bad, it was like my ears needed to explode.” She could hear nearby buildings ripping apart and trees snapping. Then the roof gave way, and the whole house lifted off its foundation before slamming back down crooked, ceiling caving in, water pouring through where the roof used to be.
They made it through. But the storm took something irreplaceable: Whitney had lost a younger daughter before this storm, and kept her ashes in a Build-A-Bear, a way to hold her close. It was destroyed. Of everything the storm took, she told us, that was the hardest. “That’s really something you can’t get back.” There’s no relief that undoes a loss like that. What we could do was make sure Whitney and her daughter had somewhere safe to land: a full year of housing, paid.
Two days earlier, on April 23, a violent EF4 tornado stayed on the ground for 37 agonizing minutes, carving a 10-mile path through the southern edge of Enid, Oklahoma, 500 yards wide at its peak, with winds near 175 miles per hour. More than 40 homes were damaged and 10 people were hurt.
Don, an Air Force veteran who is currently battling cancer, was outside when he first spotted it. “I went out, looked, I saw the tornado, didn’t think it was that close,” he said. “And then by the time I took two steps to turn back to go towards the house, then I saw debris. That’s when I knew. Get in the shelter now.” He got his family underground just in time. “We’ll be okay,” he told his wife and daughter Angela. Then he heard it: “The sound of the freight train. It was a roar.” Then the roof came off.
When Don pushed the shelter door open, the house they had lived in since 1989 and finally paid off was gone. “That’s when I lost it,” he told us.
Down the road, Arlen and Sharlene were having a quiet evening. Arlen didn’t think the storm was an immediate threat, but Sharlene’s gut told her otherwise. “I got the bang on the door that said, get out of the shower, we need to get in the shelter,” Arlen said. They’d had the shelter the whole time and never once gone down in it. This time, they did.
Moments after they got underground, they heard a banging on the shelter door. It was their neighbors, along with their young child and their dog, who had just realized the massive danger. They got in the shelter with Arlen and his family with just seconds to spare.
When the storm passed, they climbed out to find their home, the first one built in the neighborhood back in 1976, a wreck. The windows were blown out on two sides, ceilings starting to cave where the rain had nowhere else to go, doors that wouldn’t sit right in their frames anymore. One bedroom door had been torn off completely, hinges, frame, and all.
Thanks to the generosity of this community, Y’all Squad gave Don’s family and Arlen and Sharlene’s family a $15,000 recovery check each to help cover what insurance wouldn’t.
The team also set up in Enid to hand out NOAA Weather Alert Radios directly to residents. “I just want to thank you all for being so nice and generous,” one local resident told us. “I’m a widow and I’m just scared to death of storms, and I’m just so thankful for everything.”
With another outbreak already forming, the team didn’t wait around. They headed straight to St. Louis to partner with Florissant Fire Department Station 1, handing out more radios to get ahead of the next round of storms.
Over the course of a week and a half, Y’all Squad traveled to Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, delivering $135,000 in financial and material aid to families on the road to recovery.
Springfield, Kouts, and Morocco
“We took a direct hit. When we opened our eyes, the main floor of the house was out in the driveway,” Craig said. “Our world got turned upside down in less than five seconds.” His words capture what a multi-day severe weather outbreak did to communities across Illinois and Indiana starting Wednesday, June 10, 2026.
Ethan was watching the radar, like he always does, when he saw a debris ball over the animal shelter his mother, Deana, has directed for years. “There’s a debris ball over the shelter, we need to go right now,” he told her. They arrived in Springfield on June 10 to find both roofs gone and more than 150 animals trapped inside a shelter that’s anchored the community for 60 years. Neighbors formed an assembly line, clearing the upper level about three minutes before its waterlogged ceiling collapsed. Every animal made it out. Not one was hurt.
Knowing the long road ahead, Y’all Squad donated $25,000 directly to the Animal Protective League to help support its recovery efforts and continue caring for displaced animals.
“I cannot tell you how thankful and how grateful we are,” Deana told us. “That’s going to help us save so many more animals and help us get back on our feet.”
While the Animal Protective League was beginning its difficult process of recovery on June 11, we were already turning our attention to another dangerous day of severe weather.
Kouts, Indiana, residents Megan and Dave were at their home with their two-year-old son, Owen, their dog, Buddy, and Megan’s cousin, Kimmy, when they started receiving messages about a tornado warning for their area. “I saw the funnel cloud coming down,” Dave told us. It was that moment he knew it was the real deal.
“I gathered everybody into the very corner of the basement, and then Meg and I looked at each other, and you just felt what they always say, that pressure.” They huddled in a corner as the floor of their home lifted and slammed back down.
Moments later, Megan could smell gas. The meter that was on the back of the house was bent in half, damaged by the brick wall.
Realizing their stairs were blocked by debris, they called 911. Before first responders had the chance to respond, two neighbors noticed the now-flattened home and ran to help.
“They ran over, helped me get the brick wall up and helped me get the couch off the stairwell,” Dave recalled. “How did we just survive that? Our house is gone. Everything’s gone,” Megan said, moments after she and her family were rescued.
Just down the road, Conor and his young son found themselves in the path of the same tornado. As the storm approached, they took shelter in a crawl space beneath their home with just minutes to spare.
“I could actually see the funnel coming on the rain camera,” he said. When the power cut out, he knew it was close enough to be tearing down lines. He got on all fours over his son, who, luckily, thought all the noise was just thunder. Conor knew the moment it hit: the air pressure changed so fast his ears popped and he couldn’t hear anything. When his hearing came back, he knew the tornado had passed. “I heard tires screeching, which most likely was my truck that got rolled. Heard the garage door get blown in, and then just glass and stuff flying everywhere,” he recalled.
Conor tried to take the hatch off the crawl space, but the garage door had landed on top of it, blocking the way out. Firefighters arrived at his house and talked to Conor through the floor, trying to locate the hatch. Moments later, they spotted the family dog’s nose poking through it and were able to pull them all out safely.
Also in the path that day was Craig, a local farmer who was home with his wife and young son when the storm hit. “I didn’t hear a train, I just heard like a whistle,” he said. “Something changed. Something told me to go to the north wall.” He, his wife, their son, and the dog went there together, and he pulled his son in close. Then the storm was on top of them. He squeezed as hard as he could as it tried to lift them off the ground, and debris started hitting him. He believes a small interior wall near the shower is the only reason they’re still here. “Just the roar and the sounds of all that destruction was just unbelievable,” he said. “And then when you open your eyes and you look up and you can see the sky, that was pretty hard to take.”
They’d taken a direct hit. When they opened their eyes, the main floor of the house was sitting out in the driveway. His 48-by-88-foot pole barn, insulated, wired, heated, and metal on the inside, was simply gone. One pickup was flipped, and the other was badly beaten up, along with his wife’s car. A couple of tractors, including one of his pulling tractors, got torn up. “It probably only took five seconds to do all that destruction,” Craig said. “Our world got turned upside down in less than five seconds.”
The National Weather Service confirmed the Kouts tornado as a high-end EF3, winds peaking at 165 mph, just short of EF4. Y’all Squad gave Megan and Dave’s family, Conor’s family, and Craig’s family $15,000 each, and donated $5,000 to the Kouts Fire Department, which had partnered with the team on the ground to connect with these families.
From there, the team learned Morocco, Indiana, had been hit by straight-line winds, leaving hundreds without power. Y’all Squad shifted gears immediately, distributing hot meals to residents waiting on power to be restored.
From Springfield to Kouts to Morocco, in just four days, Y’all Squad delivered over $100,000 in direct, life-changing aid, made possible entirely by you!
Y’all Squad Mid-Year Impact, By the Numbers
Nearly $500,000 in total community impact
150+ animals helped through shelter rescue and temporary placement
2,500 weather radios distributed across five cities ($150,000 in retail value)
Nearly 34,000 miles traveled, reaching dozens of communities
Thank You
These are just some of the people and communities Y’all Squad has shown up for because of you.
None of this is ours. It’s yours. Every check we handed someone, every radio we placed in someone’s hands, every meal we provided: that was your generosity doing the work. We just got to carry it there.
And we’re only halfway through the year. There will be more storms, more communities in need, and more moments where showing up matters. With you behind us, Y’all Squad will keep showing up early and for as long as it takes.
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