If Janie Smith was hot, tired and achy from loading case after case of bottled water Tuesday afternoon, she didn’t show it, and she certainly didn’t complain.

In fact, she was actually overjoyed to see more people driving up to the WGAA radio station parking lot to bring in more cases of water to unload for a local Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

Smith, an office manager with the Cedartown HON Company, along with WGAA employees Bob Shannon and Jordan Merrick, were on hand Tuesday morning to help hoist donated water into a tractor trailer to be taken to the areas affected by Katrina.

Laura Bates, Polk County Chamber of Commerce Director of Membership Services and Jamie Lambert of Lambert’s Coffee Service were also stacking up the donated supplies early Tuesday.

As of Tuesday evening, Shannon said that the drive had raised over $11,000 and succeeded in filling the tractor-trailer bed to nearly full.

“We [The HON Company] did this last year to help people in Florida that had been affected by a hurricane. And today, we’re just trying to get water to people down in the Gulf,” said Smith.

Around 10:30 a.m., a truck bed full of water was delivered from the Cedartown Subway and Sherry Sheffield, with St. Luke Ministries also donated several cases of water.

“We’ll probably have more people coming back down here today, to give more,” said Sheffield. “That’s just what we do. We want to help these people.”

Only three hours into the drive Tuesday morning, the radio station had already collected $3,600.

“Everyone is excited to be helping,” said WGAA station manager Bob Shannon. “People are overwhelmingly responding to this. Some of them are bringing for to five cases at a time and donating money. It’s just awesome.