As the Courier went to press, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief feeding operations were in high gear in nine Louisiana and Mississippi venues, with 83,500 hot meals prepared and delivered to Hurricane Isaac victims in the two hard-hit Gulf Coast states by noon Sept. 4.
A stack of water is unloaded at Coteau Baptist Church in Houma, La., from one of the new 18-wheel disaster relief rigs operated by the North American Mission Board after Hurricane Isaac.Also, a South Carolina DR team was serving at the Red Cross incident command in Baton Rouge.
Most of the feeding was in the greater New Orleans area, where some 100,000 people were still without electricity in sweltering heat six days after the Category 1 storm brought torrential rains and flooding. At one point, 700,000 were without power.
In some areas – especially Plaquemines, St. John the Baptist and Jefferson parishes – the rain resulted in more flooding and residential damage than that caused by Hurricane Katrina seven years ago. Much of Plaquemines remained under five feet of water.
“Our greatest need is for more mud-out people,” said Gibbie McMillan, state DR director for the Louisiana Baptist Convention.
“In Laplace, there are 150 homes in need of mud-out,” McMillan said. “Water is just now receding in some areas, so we can get teams in. We’re trying to get people as close to affected areas as possible, but we can’t bring in people unless we have a place to house and feed them.”
From its disaster operations center in Alpharetta, NAMB coordinates and manages Southern Baptist responses to major disasters through a partnership between NAMB and the SBC’s 42 state conventions, most of which have their own state disaster relief programs.
SBDR assets include 82,000 trained volunteers, including chaplains, and some 1,550 mobile units for feeding, chainsaw, mud-out, command, communication, childcare, shower, laundry, water purification, repair/rebuild and power generation. SBDR is one of the three largest mobilizers of trained disaster relief volunteers in the United States, including the American Red Cross and The Salvation Army.
Southern Baptists and others who want to donate to the disaster relief operations can contact their state conventions or contribute to NAMB’s disaster relief fund via namb.net/disaster-relief-donations. Other ways to donate are to call 1-866-407-NAMB (6262) or mail checks to NAMB, P.O. Box 116543, Atlanta, Ga., 30368-6543. Designate checks for “Disaster Relief.” – NAMB