WASHINGTON — As Hurricane Sandy maintained its relentless path toward the East Coast, the District of Columbia Baptist Convention postponed its annual meeting and Baptist relief groups across the Mid-Atlantic ramped up preparations for recovery operations in the wake of the massive storm.
The D.C. convention, which includes about 140 congregations in Washington and suburban Maryland and Virginia, put its Oct. 29-30 meeting on hold “in an effort to ensure the safety of our D. C. Baptist Convention family.”
“We won’t set a new date until after the storm has passed,” said executive director/minister Ricky Creech. “It will depend on the impact we receive.”
The District of Columbia Baptist emergency response team has its disaster relief vehicles ready to deploy for recovery efforts.
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That impact was expected to be severe, as Sandy retained its Category 1 status, packing winds of up to 75 mph. Meteorologists said landfall likely will be Monday between the Delmarva Peninsula and Long Island, spawning storm surges of several feet between North Carolina and New England. Flooding and power outages will be widespread, officials warned.
The governors of Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia, and the mayor of Washington, have declared states of emergency, as have officials in states further north.
Complications from power outages will be exacerbated by a mass of arctic air sweeping south from Canada, and by a separate winter storm — which could be worsened as it collides with hurricane force winds — that is predicted to dump significant snow in the western mountains of Virginia and Maryland.
Baptist relief groups set up an area command center Oct. 27 in Harrisburg, Pa., said Dean Miller, disaster relief coordinator for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board.
“Harrisburg is centrally located in the area where most of the recovery will occur,” Miller said. The operation will be located in a volunteer house owned by the Baptist Convention of Pennsylvania-South Jersey, about five miles east of downtown Harrisburg. The building was renovated several years ago in part by mission volunteers from churches affiliated with the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
Miller, based in Richmond, is working closely with other Baptist disaster relief groups in a long-established system coordinated with the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. Among those groups is North Carolina Baptist Men, which has placed three mobile kitchens on alert, along with assessment and recovery teams.
If needed, North Carolina relief units will focus their efforts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, according to an update on the group’s site.
The D.C. Baptist emergency response team also is engaged in coordinated efforts, and has chainsaw, debris removal and flood response units ready to deploy, said Creech.
“We are working to utilize our emergency response units as requested and will coordinate with … Baptist partners for any mutual aid that may be needed in the National Capital Area,” he said.
In anticipation of Sandy’s impact, schools, institutions and businesses in the Mid-Atlantic are closing and transportation systems are seeing serious disruptions.
Both Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond and the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Va., cancelled Monday classes. Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem — well west of the storm’s projected path — was forced to postpone its annual Steelman Lecture when lecturer Diana Butler Bass was unable to travel. U.S. airlines had cancelled more than 7,400 flights as of Oct. 28.
The Virginia Baptist Resource Center in suburban Richmond, which houses the Virginia Baptist Mission Board and other organizations, also will be closed Monday, as will the D.C. convention building in downtown Washington.
In North Carolina, where coastal communities began seeing Sandy’s effects Sunday, bridges were closed and ferries had shut down operations. Sections of N.C. 12 — the main artery on the Outer Banks — were flooded and impassable.
There were no reports yet of damage to churches, most of which appeared to hold Sunday morning worship services as scheduled.
Matt Cook, pastor of First Baptist Church in Wilmington, said there appeared to be “minimal impact” there and that Sunday morning’s congregation was “a little smaller but not much.”
In Virginia, Eddie Heath, a field strategist for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, reported some churches in the state’s Tidewater region cancelled services.
Meanwhile, the Caribbean struggled to recover after Hurricane Sandy swept through, leaving at least 65 dead — 51 of those in Haiti, where Baptist groups have been operating relief efforts since the island was devastated by an earthquake in 2010. Almost 400,000 Haitians still live in flimsy shelters two years after the quake.
In Cuba, Associated Baptist Press reported that two victims were members of First Baptist Church in Santiago. That church and about 500 others, plus 800 missions, are part of the Eastern Cuba Baptist Convention. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has a covenant with that convention, which is located in the hardest-hit part of the nation, Charles Ray, the CBF’s U.S. disaster response coordinator, told ABP.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.