Baptist disaster-relief groups are gearing up around the country to respond to Hurricane Matthew’s devastating sweep across Haiti and the Caribbean, and preparing for expected damage and injuries as the storm hits the coasts of Florida and South Carolina.
Nearly 300 people died when the hurricane struck Haiti Oct. 4 with 145-mile-per-hour winds and torrential rain. The storm’s sweep over the country of 11 million, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, left houses and crops destroyed and stretches of towns and villages under several feet of water. Cuba and the Bahamas also felt the hurricane’s fury.
Matthew is expected to make landfall Friday in Florida as a Category 4 storm and move up through the Georgia and South Carolina coasts with potentially catastrophic effects. Hundreds of thousands are evacuating to more secure inland locations.
David Harding, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s International Disaster Response Coordinator, said in a press release that a response in the Caribbean is beginning to take shape alongside other global Baptists. Harding said partnerships with the CBF of Florida and CBF Bahamas will be critical as plans are formulated for a response in Haiti, southeast Cuba and the United States.
“Our focus will be to help the most vulnerable that do not have financial reserves to recover from the loss,” Harding said. “Assistance in this time of need will give a sense of hope that God and God’s people care about their plight in the midst of devastation.”
CBF field personnel Jenny Jenkins, who rode out the storm in Grand Goâve, Haiti, will serve as a point person for the Fellowship, said Becky Smith, the CBF’s area coordinator of mission teams for the Americas region.
“With Jenny’s local medical and community development work already in place, along with her network of Haitian Baptist colleagues, we have a wonderful system of support on the ground on which to base relief work,” Smith said.
Meanwhile, Southern Baptist Convention leaders in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, along with the SBC North American Mission Board, have been mapping out rapid response to the storm’s impact in the United States, Baptist Press reported.
“We’ve been in close contact with our state partners and are preparing to help in any way we can,” Mickey Caison, executive director for NAMB’s SBDR team, told BP. “The potential for harm to people and massive property damage is certainly a major concern.
Caison said leaders have begun dialog with both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Red Cross to coordinate planning. Feeding units may be deployed to assist the large number of storm evacuees leaving coastal areas in advance of landfall.
“We could easily be looking at eight mass feeding sites in Florida alone with capacity of 300,000 meals per day. We are also gauging our supply preparation and transportation for water, rolled roofing and other supplies we would need to truck in.”
The Baptist General Association of Virginia, which operates an extensive disaster-relief network, has placed all of its trained volunteers on “alert” status and asked them to prepare for a possible callout.