PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico (ABP) — A killer flood shattered the heart of Villa de Fuente Sunday evening, April 4. In the days that followed Mexico and Texas Baptists worked side-by-side in the Piedras Negras neighborhood to get it beating again.
“At first, the morning after it happened, people were just crying,” said Israel Rodriguez, pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista, who spent much of the first couple of days driving the church ambulance looking for the 100-plus members of his church who were initially reported missing. “But now they are happy because they see a lot of people have come to help.”
It was a task that called for multiple resources after the placid, low water Rio Escondido turned savage. It took only half an hour for the water level to surge from 18 inches to 25 feet — on a night when no rain was falling on Piedras Negras.
At its apex the resulting lake stretched a half-mile on either side of the river, damaging an estimated 600 homes, and killing 35 people. There are still approximately 20 still missing. Practically all the contents of the homes were ruined by the muddy residue the ebbing water left behind.
Though in shock and grieving, residents returned to their homes and began trying to rebuild their lives, often scrapping the mud away with bare hands or a stray shovel found among the debris. Some attempted to clean the silt from their clothes but the stench was overpowering — and word soon came that everything the water had touched was likely to be dangerously contaminated.
So while the government opened temporary housing shelters and feeding centers, set up emergency clinics to immunize against tuberculosis and dengue fever and passed out giant squeegees, shovels and bottled water, the Baptists and other volunteer groups began coming to the community's aide.
“My first thought [after hearing about the disaster] was for our church members — we had 18 families lose their homes,” Rodriguez said. “But my second thought, when I had time, was to call the National Baptist Convention of Mexico and then Dexton Shores [director of Texas Baptist River Ministries]. I knew Dexton would get the word to the rest of Texas Baptists.”
Tuesday morning Shores arrived with a truckload of blankets, clothes and drinking water. That afternoon a Texas Baptist Men feeding unit from Bluebonnet Baptist Association crossed the border with a water purification system.
Wednesday morning two chaplains from the BGCT-affiliated Victim Relief program arrived from Houston to provide trauma counseling. That afternoon the first of two trucks from Buckner Baptist Benevolences, loaded with sacks of food and boxes of clothes and toys packed around the primary load of new shoes, pulled into Iglesia Bautista Emanuel in the center of Villa de Fuente. By evening four students from Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio were on hand to help wherever they were needed.
Later in the week seven “mud units” operated by Texas Baptist Men joined the effort. “That was the biggest need after the initial food and clothing was provided,” Shores said. “Every building in the neighborhood was coated with thick, sticky mud and the power sprayers were really helpful.”
Meanwhile the Mexican convention was gathering monetary support, dispatching a truck loaded with blankets from Mexico City and sending teams of volunteers to help residents clean the mud from their homes.
Operating primarily out of Iglesia Bautista Emanuel — the only Baptist church in Piedras Negras to be flooded — and a community social club six blocks away from the church, where the Texas Baptist Men set up a feeding center, local Baptists and the Texas volunteers linked up.
Just a couple of hours after the sanctuary of Emanuel was finally clean — all the ruined pews piled in the street — it reopened as a distribution center for the goods donated through Buckner. “We've been wearing the same clothes for three days — the clothes we had on when we escaped,” one woman said as she waited patiently in line. “My daughter has been barefoot the whole time, and I'm worried she might get sick from the contaminated mud.”
Meanwhile, at another table, the Victim Relief counselor talked with anyone who needed a listening ear and a compassionate heart. “They need to understand that, while this flood was certainly not normal, the feelings of fear and anger and loss that they feel are completely normal,” said Don Perkins, associate director of Victim Relief.
The emotions were deep and jagged.
Victoria Aparicio, who with her husband started the church in 1968, returned to clean-up work after attending the graveside service of the only Emanuel member to drown. The 71-year-old man, a new Christian, and his family were clinging to a utility pole. His wife was rescued but the man, his daughter and a granddaughter all died.
“Please ask Texas Baptists to pray for our people,” the matriarch pleaded, wiping tears from her eyes. “We think the death toll is much higher than is being reported.”
Iglesia Bautista Trinidad only had one family flooded out, “but we are hurting because all of us have friends and family and neighbors who suffered a lot,” pastor Geronimo de la Cruz Mesa said. The displaced Trinidad family is temporarily living in a room at the church.
“They tried to drive out but the car stalled so they just ran,” Mesa explained. “Eventually the man, his wife and their four-year-old daughter had to climb up on a roof. The next day they found their car exactly where they left it — but there were two other cars piled on top of it.”
The TBM feeding unit was relocated twice — the last time to Villa de Fuente at the express request of Guadalupe Morales, the wife of the governor of the Mexican state of Coahuila, who coordinated much of the relief effort. Impressed with the range of assistance Texas Baptists were providing — and the willingness of the volunteers to work completely under the direction of Mexican officials, she wanted the Texas Baptist Men to be in the center of the hardest hit neighborhood.
“Because people try to take advantage even of tragedies to slip things across the border illegally the procedure called for all aid coming from the United States to be unloaded at the international bridge and then reloaded into Mexican army trucks for distribution,” Shores explained. “But Mrs. Morales got that waived for Texas Baptists so our trucks could come straight through.”
Rodriguez credited the partnership between the National Baptist Convention of Mexico and the Baptist General Convention of Texas with allowing the rapid and efficient relief efforts.
“Thanks be to God that three months ago we started organizing the partnership that was signed last November,” he said. “Certainly we couldn't foresee this but because we were planning other joint projects already we were able to coordinate the response of the two conventions quickly.”
Felix Castillo, bivocational pastor of First Baptist Church in Eagle Pass, worked with Rodriguez much of Monday and Tuesday in the church ambulance. One encounter in particular left him deeply shaken.
“Tuesday some people flagged because they had found a body,” Castillo said. “He looked like he was about three-years-old, just laying there, so small. One man took off his shirt and covered him up. We all were crying. That night when I got home I hugged my children (a 16-month-old son and a three-year-old daughter) a lot longer and a lot harder than usual.”
Castillo, whose small church collected and donated 50 bags of food and clothing the day after the flood, planned to bring as many volunteers from Eagle Pass as he could over the weekend to help with the cleanup. He sees the work as an opportunity rather than a hardship.
“Some people may say, ‘why should I help those people in Piedras Negras, they aren't my responsibility – I don't know them,'” he explained. “But this is a wonderful opportunity to be faithful to what God told us to do. We aren't merely helping other people — we are being kind and loving to Jesus himself. Remember he said when we helped people who are weak and hurting, we are doing it to him.”
— Photos available.
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