Labor Day was no picnic or holiday for dozens of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers and leaders involved in responses to flooding along the East Coast and in North Dakota and to raging wildfires across Texas.
Disaster relief teams from South Carolina have dispatched to affected states along the Eastern Seaboard, including North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island and Vermont.
“We have been on conference calls with the North American Mission Board and other state disaster relief directors nearly every day since it looked like Irene would hit the East Coast,” said Cliff Satterwhite, director of the disaster relief group of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.
Palmetto state Baptist volunteers are manning mud-out teams, chainsaw teams and shower units. In all, 25 South Carolina teams have deployed or are scheduled to deploy to hurricane-affected areas, Satterwhite said.
The SBDR responses to floods and fires were afoot even before Tropical Storm Lee dumped up to a foot of rain along the Gulf Coast areas of Louisiana and Mississippi and then moved northeast where it spawned tornadoes in Alabama and Georgia, damaging dozens of homes and causing flashfloods in the Atlanta metro area.
In the wake of Hurricane Irene, Mike Flannery, state disaster relief director for the New York Baptist Convention and a director of missions in Buffalo, reported recovery work will be a crucial need in upper-state New York and north New Jersey, where water levels are receding but are not yet low enough to insert mud-out units.
“We are desperate for mud-out units,” said Flannery, who cited a minimum need for six mud-out teams from other state Baptist conventions.
“Please tell Southern Baptists to keep us in prayer,” Flannery said. “In times of crisis, people point their eyes and ears to the Lord.” Flannery said the New York flooding is the worst, most pervasive disaster in his five years in disaster relief in the state.
SBDR volunteers from 25 of the 42 state conventions are assisting in many other disaster relief responses in the 11 states pounded by Hurricane Irene, including feeding units in North Carolina and Virginia.
Mark Madison of the Baptist Convention of New England said the needs are widespread in that region.
“We’re focusing on four locations in southern Vermont and in Montpelier. We have 100 jobs assessed and ready to work. We really need 12 more mud-out teams as well as chaplain/assessment teams to make an impact,” Madison said.
Bruce Poss, NAMB’s disaster relief coordinator, supports Madison, Flannery and others in their desperate pleas for mud-out teams from other parts of the country.
“There’s a lot of needs and we are spread very thin,” Poss said. “We have opportunities and needs for more volunteers in New York, New Jersey, Vermont, North Carolina and Texas. We appreciate the many states that have sent teams, but the needs are still there.”
Not to be overshadowed by Hurricane Irene is an impending major disaster relief response by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and the Texas Baptist Men in drought-plagued Texas, where 60 wildfires across 100,000 acres throughout the state have destroyed 1,000 Texas homes.
“There are fires all over Texas,” said Jim Richardson, SBTC disaster relief director in Grapevine, Texas. “We’ve served some 5,000 meals to firefighters at Palo Pinto near Mineral Wells and are waiting on word on where to go next.”
At least 5,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes in Bastrop County near Austin, and 400 are in emergency shelters. About 500 homes were lost in Bastrop County alone, he said.
After feeding operations, Richardson said “ash-out” recovery operations will start in areas where homes have burned down, helping residents find any last belongings and cleaning off slabs where nothing else is left.
– With additional reporting by Butch Blume.