Baptist disaster response units from the Mid-Atlantic initiated feeding operations in earnest over the weekend as organizers began turning their attention to recovery efforts in the still-struggling Northeast a week after Superstorm Sandy ravaged the region.
Volunteers from North Carolina and Virginia are distributing meals in New Jersey and New York, where more than a million people remain without power as temperatures are dropping into the 30s overnight.
Widespread gasoline shortages are compounding the misery, as is a possible new challenge — a slow-moving nor’easter that may bring significant wind, rain and snow to the region by Wednesday, Nov. 7.
A Virginia Baptist disaster response feeding unit deployed to Buckhannon, W. Va., preparing vats of food for meal distribution.
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A Virginia Baptist disaster response feeding unit and chaplain are based in New York City’s Breezy Point, a neighborhood in Queens which saw extensive flooding during the Oct. 29 hurricane as well as a six-alarm fire that destroyed more than 100 homes. The team, whose American Red Cross-assigned feeding area is across the Rockway Inlet in Brooklyn, prepared its first 1,000 meals Monday, Nov. 5, said Virginia Baptist disaster response coordinator Dean Miller.
In New Jersey, North Carolina Baptist Men and Women has two recovery units in Atlantic City and a third about 50 miles north in Toms River, based at the city’s First Baptist Church. The three units have a combined capacity of 80,000 meals a day and include shower, laundry, generator and recovery units.
Both Miller and Gaylon Moss, NCBM/W disaster relief coordinator, said “many recovery volunteers” will be needed in the days ahead.
A chainsaw and debris removal unit with the District of Columbia Baptist Convention’s emergency response team will leave Nov. 7 for suburban Trenton, N.J., where they will work for about five days in collaboration with the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey.
“Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and non-denominational brothers and sisters [are] coming together to serve those in need,” Ricky Creech, the D.C. convention’s executive director and emergency response coordinator, said in a Facebook post.
One of North Carolina Baptist Men and Women's teams in New Jersey.
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Meanwhile, another Virginia Baptist team is preparing meals in Buckhannon, W. Va., about 70 miles south of Morgantown, where a Sandy-enhanced winter storm dropped significant snow, downing power lines. Cold air behind the rain brought by the mid-week nor’easter could bring additional heavy snow to the area.
The team served about 3,500 meals in Buckhannon over the weekend, and that number is expected to increase over the next several days, said Miller.
Both the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia and the CBF of North Carolina 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.
Alan Sherouse, Metro’s pastor, told Associated Baptist Press the church experienced only minor gutter damage, but added, “We are actively assessing how we can most effectively be a part of the disaster-response efforts.”
“In the short-term, we are opening our sanctuary as a daytime shelter for anyone who needs power, Internet, a cell phone charge or a hot meal,” Sherouse told ABP. “We are also teaming with area partners to provide meals for a local housing community that is without power. Additionally, we continue our regular direct services of food, clothing and toiletry distribution.”
Direct donations to assist the disaster response efforts can be made through the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, North Carolina Baptist Men and Women or the D.C. Baptist Convention.
Robert Dilday (rdilday@religiousherald.org) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.