Churches joined thousands of other organizations across the Mid-Atlantic Monday in closing facilities and cancelling activities as Hurricane Sandy made landfall, leaving millions without power and flooding most coastal areas.
Much of Ocean City, Md., was underwater as Hurricane Sandy passed through. (Photo courtesy of DMVFollowers.com)
|
At least 13 people had been killed in storm-related incidents in both the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast by early Tuesday morning and more than 6 million people were without electricity as temperatures dropped across the area. The storm’s damage in the nation’s most populated region may exceed $20 billion, early predictions suggested.
Meanwhile, a separate winter storm, exacerbated by gale-force winds, brought as much as a foot of snow in other parts of the region, snarling traffic and downing power lines in the western mountains of Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia. At the same time, in McDowell County, just east of Asheville, a 2.9 magnitude earthquake rattled buildings, though no damage or injuries were reported.
Congregations across the Mid-Atlantic posted alerts on web sites and Facebook pages, announcing changed schedules and plans to assist victims in the wake of the storm.
“The church office will be closed on Tuesday,” wrote Heritage Baptist Church in Annapolis, Md., in a typical post. “We pray that all will take the necessary precautions to be safe through these days.”
Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church in Washington urged congregants to monitor local television stations for closing updates, adding, “Be prayerful! Be safe!”
There were not yet reports of damage from churches in Washington and Maryland, which were still being pummelled early Tuesday morning. But at Kilmarnock Baptist Church on Virginia’s Northern Neck — which was lashed by high winds and rain — pastor Matthew Tennant hunkered down with his family in “weather-forced quality time, with lots of monopoly, chess, and cards,” he said.
On Sunday, the church, at the tip of the peninsula between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers about 120 miles southeast of Washington, drew a “group of hearty souls” who braved the weather to worship, Tennant said. But by Monday, much of the Neck was without power as the storm swept across the Chesapeake Bay.
Under an ominous sky, Kilmarnock Baptist Church opened its doors to worshippers early Sunday morning, Oct. 28. (Photo by Matthew Tennant) |
Kilmarnock Baptist is a Red Cross feeding station and has been placed on alert, Tennant said. But “I won’t know for sure if they’ll need us for a couple more days.”
Though North Carolina escaped the brunt of the hurricane, storm surges flooded the coast, including the Outer Banks.
First Baptist Church of Smithton in Belhaven, N.C. was getting “some wind and rain” on Monday but the storm “basically missed us,” said pastor Matt Johnson. But the church, not far from Pamlico Sound, had its own storm-related event.
An 87-year-old member of the church, whose home had been inundated during last year’s Hurricane Irene, was living with neighbors while her house was being raised above flood level.
“Saturday night, as the storm approached and its severity was yet unknown, she suddenly realized that all her worldly possessions were in a storage container sitting directly on the ground in her front yard,” said Johnson. “If we had gotten even four inches (which seemed likely at the time, but didn’t end up happening) the container would have flooded and she would have lost everything. So she called some church members who have a trucking company. As the rain started to fall, they went out and winched up the container on the back of a flatbed truck.”
The cable broke and had to be replaced but eventually the container was moved to higher ground, Johnson said.
Two Baptist affiliated schools in eastern North Carolina — Campbell University in Buies Creek and Chowan University in Murfreesboro — reported strong wind and rain but no damage. Further inland, both Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem and Bluefield College in Bluefield, Va., postponed lectures when guest speakers were unable to travel as thousands of flights were cancelled across the region. Both Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond and the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Va., remained closed on Tuesday.
Fork Union Military Academy, a Baptist-affiliated school about 60 miles west of Richmond, assured parents it was keeping close watch on their students and urged them to monitor campus conditions themselves with a weather camera mounted by a local television station on the roof of Hatcher Hall. “You can see the view looking almost due west from the top of our central administration building, and see current temperatures, wind speeds and precipitation levels,” the school said on its web site.
The Peninsula Baptist Association, a network of Virginia churches in Hampton, Newport News and Williamsburg, cancelled the first day of its annual meeting, though it retained most scheduled Tuesday activities. Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia’s annual meeting, set for this weekend, will continue as planned, though WMUV leaders were monitoring weather conditions at Eagle Eyrie Baptist Conference Center, the retreat facility in the Blue Ridge Mountains where the meeting was to be held.
Meanwhile, Baptist disaster relief groups continued preparations as the hurricane — downgraded to a tropical storm but still packing dangerous winds — began its devastation, especially in Maryland, New York and New Jersey.
- Virginia Baptist disaster relief ministries held its last pre-landfall conference call Monday with other relief partners, which include the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board. Another call Tuesday at 1 p.m. likely will begin deploying recovery units, said coordinator Dean Miller.
- North Carolina Baptist Men is sending an assessment team to Dare County between Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, and another team was to arrive in New Jersey either Monday night or Tuesday. Two mobile kitchens and several support units have been placed on alert and will likely be deployed in the next few days. The organization also has begun collecting donations to assist the Eastern Baptist Convention of Cuba, which ministers in a part of island hardest hit by Sandy’s sweep through the Caribbean. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina partners with North Carolina Baptist Men in disaster response.
- The District of Columbia Baptist emergency response team set up a local command center at Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church, whose pastor, Kendrick Curry, is president of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention. Curry would have presided at the convention’s Oct. 29-30 annual meeting, which was postponed as the storm approached.
- The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was working with other relief partners in deploying recovery teams, said Charles Ray, the group's national disaster response coordinator. George Bullard, general secretary of the North American Baptist Fellowship, has activated its disaster response network, as had the American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.