SNEEDVILLE, Tenn. — On Friday, Morocco was struck by a devastating 6.8 magnitude earthquake in the High Atlas Mountains southwest of Marrakech, leaving more than 2,800 people dead and more than 2,500 injured.
Organization across the world are showing their support, and soon an East Tennessee organization will join, too.
Joe Hurston, the president of Sneedville-based Air Mobile Ministries, is no stranger to helping out during a crisis.
"Just a few weeks ago, we were in Hawaii and Maui, and we had been working on going back. And then we began to track the hurricane, Hurricane Lee. And then in the middle of all of that came this terrible earthquake, death toll now 2,500 and climbing. Isolated villages that are completely 100% destroyed."
Hurston plans to begin his journey to Morocco on Friday.
"The first thing is we're going to leave Tennessee and drive 750 miles to Florida, then we're going to board a flight, surprisingly cheap flights out of Orlando, I'm very thankful for that," said Hurston. "And then about 19 hours, with several stops along the way, we will land in the capital at the ground zero of where the earthquake occurred. We have already made excellent contact with a number of our groups that we work with."
He said clean water is one of the most important things to have when dealing with tragedies like this.
"Water always becomes the number one deal," said Hurston. "And we're trying to get this water into place to stop deadly disease that can break out and cause a second tragedy. So water is extremely important. So what we have is a little machine that is small enough to go into the overhead bin of a commercial airliner very small and portable, yet that one machine can give 1,000 people a day drinking water."
He plans to bring 10 water purifiers to help people in the area.
Hurston said he's thankful for the generosity of those who are praying and donating to help fund these purifiers.
He adds that people can keep up with his journey on to Morocco his blog.