Mickey Caison and his team of South Carolina Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers were exhausted when they pulled into First Baptist Church of Homestead, Fla., on the evening of Aug. 25, 1992, just one day after Hurricane Andrew barreled into South Florida with winds of around 141 miles per hour. The team had arrived in the […]
The entire island of Puerto Rico lost power over the weekend as Hurricane Fiona brought havoc on Sunday, Sept. 18. Send Relief pre-positioned its response ahead of the storm’s landfall and has begun assessing the need. “Fiona whipped across southwest Puerto Rico and knocked out the fragile electrical system,” said Coy Webb, Send Relief’s crisis […]
Twenty years after spending weeks in what could only be called a war zone, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers are reflecting on their experience working in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and how it affected their lives. Sam Porter is the national director for Southern Baptist Disaster Relief for Send Relief with the North American […]
Louisiana received a “gut punch” Oct. 9, as the second hurricane in six weeks made landfall in the state. The eye of Hurricane Delta crashed ashore at 5 p.m. as a Category 2 storm with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph in Creole, nearly 13 miles east of Cameron, where Laura made landfall as a […]
A little more than a week after slamming the Louisiana coast on Aug. 27, it was obvious Hurricane Laura’s 140 mph Category 4 winds considered nothing sacred, including houses of worship. Media reports told of hundreds of thousands of Louisianans who were left without power and water, perhaps for weeks. In many communities, cars have […]
Hurricane Dorian made landfall Sept. 6 in northeast North Carolina as a Category 1 storm at Cape Hatteras as first responders in the Bahamas worked to reach survivors after the storm’s devastating visit to those islands. Southern Baptists are serving on both fronts. As the storm traveled up the east coast, flash flooding occurred in […]
Hurricane season is here, and South Carolina Baptist Disaster Relief teams from across the state are preparing to respond when and if they are needed. “Near the end of each summer, we gather as many of our unit leaders (blue hats) as possible for a day of training, debriefing, and discussion of what we may […]
When college students return to Staten Island over Christmas break this year, some of them might cross paths with Frank Primiani, a resident and Hurricane Sandy survivor who benefited from the work of Baptist students on spring break earlier in 2013. But they won’t find the same “Frank Primiani” who met those earlier student volunteers. […]