Baptist disaster response teams in New Jersey and New York resumed operations Nov. 9 after a nor’easter’s wind, rain and snow forced a temporary suspension of activities in the region still recovering from Hurricane Sandy.
Trucks loaded with food for Virginia Baptist Disaster Response to serve this weekend in Queens were lined up at nearby Fort Tilden, on the Rockaway Peninsula.
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Virginia Baptist Disaster Response returned to work to face significantly increased demand for food, preparing about 10,000 meals on Friday, said Dean Miller, the organization’s coordinator. He predicted the team, based in the Queens borough of New York City, would prepare about 15,000 meals on both Saturday and Sunday.
More volunteers for both feeding and recovery will be needed after Wednesday, Nov. 14, Miller said.
North Carolina Baptist Men and Women also resumed work at its three New Jersey feeding sites — Toms River, Piscataway and the Meadowland, said Gaylon Moss, NCBM/W’s disaster relief coordinator. Other recovery units are based in Atlantic City, he added. Before the suspension the combined teams had prepared about 140,000 meals.
North Carolina Baptist Men and Women volunteers prepare to serve meals in New Jersey.
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“We have a good number of volunteers next week, but we welcome folks that want to help later in the month,” Moss said — an indication of the long-term nature of recovery in what may be the largest American relief effort since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
On Nov. 9, the District of Columbia Baptist Convention’s Emergency Response Team began chainsaw and debris removal operations in New Brunswick and Somerset, N.J., working closely with the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey.
Virginia and North Carolina Baptist disaster response in the Northeast is largely being conducted as part of long-standing collaborations among state Baptist conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board, under the direction of the American Red Cross.
On the Eastern Shore
Meanwhile, recovery efforts on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia were being ramped up as the extent of Hurricane Sandy’s impact there was becoming clearer.
Two D.C. Baptist Convention Emergency Response Team volunteers are dwarfed by a fallen tree in New Jersey.
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Will Baker, pastor of Drummondtown Baptist Church in Accomac, Va., told the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia that the storm surge “came in quicker and higher than anyone expected.”
“Families were trapped in their homes as they watched, first their cars and then the first floors of their homes, fill with the salt water of the Chesapeake Bay,” Baker said. “This was the scene down the many small peninsulas, or necks, that make up the bay side of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Everyone knew that the tide would be high but no one ever expected it to come so far inland. That’s why the homes in places like the small village of Sanford, nearly a mile from the bay, weren’t built up off the ground. No one ever expected a storm like this.
“Hurricane Sandy really was different than any storm in recent memory,” he said. “The small villages and hamlets nestled on the necks of the Chesapeake Bay were flooded with five to six feet of water entering many homes. Even as late as Wednesday there were still numerous small fishing communities that couldn’t be reached by car due to flooding.”
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| Eastern Shore pastor Will Baker interviewed a young victim of Hurricane Sandy’s fury. |
Baker said volunteers would be needed over the next several weeks “to rip out dry-wall, carpet and anything else that can rot or mold and then put up new drywall, carpet and anything else that needs to be replaced.” He can be contacted at [email protected].
A Virginia Baptist Disaster Response assessor and three-person recovery team also were in the Eastern Shore’s Accomack County to assess needs there.
Both the CBFVA and the CBF of North Carolina — which partners with North Carolina Baptist Men and Women — are encouraging their affiliated churches to send “mission boxes” containing toiletries, snacks and clothing to Metro Baptist Church in Manhattan to distribute to its hard-hit neighbors.
Fewer donations
Nationally, disaster relief donations to the Red Cross had topped $117 million by Friday and the Salvation Army had raised another $5 million, the Huffington Post reported Nov. 9. Still, overall fundraising among U.S. charities has been slower than for Japan’s 2011 earthquake and Haiti’s 2010 quake, based on figures from nonprofit service provider Blackbaud and the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Post reported.
Officials at the Salvation Army told the Post donations have fallen far short of needs on the ground and that the public may not grasp the extent of damage.
Figures for contributions to Baptist relief organizations at this point were not available. Donations to assist disaster response efforts may be made through the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, North Carolina Baptist Men and Women and the D.C. Baptist Convention.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.