Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Neighborhood notebook

Bills fans will tailgate for hurricane relief

By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published September 9, 2005

The Bills Backers of Brandon, a group that supports the Buffalo Bills, are combining their opening Sunday tailgate in the first week of the NFL season with a fundraiser for hurricane relief.

"As long as we can do something to help those poor people in the gulf states, it's all to the good," said Mark Seland, the group's president.

The party starts at 11 a.m. Sunday at O'Brien's Irish Pub, 701 W Lumsden Road, Brandon, where Bills fans often cheer on their team. Jurgen Wochnik, the O'Brien's manager, said the pub was preparing for a crowd of several hundred people.

All Bucs fans are welcome, Seland said, as the bay area pulls together for Hurricane Katrina's victims.

The unity could be short-lived. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers anticipate a 1 p.m. home opener Sept. 18 at Raymond James Stadium. Their opponents? The Buffalo Bills.

"We're friends even next week," Seland said. "But we may distance ourselves somewhat."

To his neighbors, Jon Buckles must have looked like Chicken Little last year, boarding up his Riverview home. A nasty character named Charley had been kicked out of every bar in the Caribbean. Now he was lumbering up the coast, looking for a fight.

Only Buckles took that storm, or the three that followed, seriously.

"They were all drinking beer and laughing at me," Buckles recalled.

Maybe not now.

Buckles, 48, and his wife, Christy, have created a way to make more southern Hillsborough residents take hurricanes seriously.

They helped create the South County Hurricane Preparedness Town Hall Meeting and Expo, which debuts at 9 a.m. Saturday at Summerfield Community Center, 13011 Summerfield Blvd., Riverview. The four-hour event will showcase county officials and experts briefing residents on hurricane essentials.

Speakers include Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms; Hillsborough Emergency Management Department director Larry Gispert; emergency planner Steve Porter; Betty Tribble, vice president for the United Way's Volunteer Connection; former state Rep. Sandy Murman; and WTVT-FOX 13 meteorologist Andy Johnson.

Even before Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans and much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Buckles had lined up sponsors for the convention-style display. At least 20 businesses and nonprofits will be on hand Saturday.

Buckles envisioned the expo as a chance for residents to donate items for hurricane relief - chain saws, masking tape, radios, work gloves, first aid kits - that emergency officials would store for the next storm. Now the emphasis has shifted to helping Katrina's victims. Buckles said he has been helping to get supplies to 60 of the storm's refugees, who have been bused to a Brandon hotel that he declined to name.

"I feel the horror," he said. "Tampa Bay is just as susceptible of being under water."

[Last modified September 8, 2005, 10:43:08]