Baptist disaster relief volunteers from Virginia and North Carolina were deployed to stricken New York and New Jersey Oct. 31, while the District of Columbia Baptist Convention’s emergency response team continued damage assessments in Washington and Maryland.
The teams were initiating what may be several weeks of assistance in the region devastated by Superstorm Sandy. At least 56 people were killed in the massive hurricane that lashed the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Oct. 28-30 with winds and flooding. Almost 5 million people remained without electricity Nov. 1.
Feeding units, like this Virginia Baptist operation in Bath County, Va., after last June's derecho, deployed in New York and New Jersey Oct. 31.
|
A Virginia Baptist feeding unit from Newport News, Va., with 15 volunteers arrived in Middletown, N.Y., Oct. 31, said Virginia Baptist disaster relief coordinator Dean Miller. An additional 10 volunteers were to arrive within a day prepared to assist the unit, which has a 15,000 meal capacity. A chaplain also was dispatched to the region, Miller said.
A shower unit operated by Virginia’s Natural Bridge Baptist Association was to arrive Thursday morning in Middletown, about 70 miles northwest of New York City.
A Mechanicsville, Va., feeding unit left Nov. 1 for the Morgantown, W.Va., area, where up to three feet of snow downed power lines. About 23 volunteers will join that unit, which also has a 15,000 meal capacity, Miller said. A shower unit from the Blackwater Baptist Association in southeastern Virginia also deployed to West Virginia.
Meanwhile, about 75 volunteers with North Carolina Baptist Men and Women arrived with a mobile kitchen and shower unit on the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., Oct. 31, prepared to serve meals to 30,000 people the next day.
“Pray for safety for the teams and pray that God will open doors for us to minister to hurting people,” the disaster relief organization posted on its Facebook page. “Pray for the people of New Jersey as they deal with their current situation.”
Minimal response necessary in Virginia, North Carolina
While the storm pummeled both the Virginia and North Carolina coasts, Baptist disaster relief officials in the two states assessed damage and determined only limited responses were necessary, freeing them to move units to harder hit places.
Ricky Creech, the D.C. convention’s executive director, reported “minimal damage as well” in the Washington area, but added, “assessments are still being conducted” by the convention’s emergency response team.
“Presently volunteers are on alert status,” he said in a Facebook post. “If units are not mobilized in D.C. there will be an opportunity for units and volunteers to respond to other areas as needed.”
Churches affiliated with both the Baptist General Association of Virginia and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia partner with Virginia Baptist disaster relief ministries. The CBF of North Carolina works closely with North Carolina Baptist Men and Women, as does the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. The Mid-Atlantic CBF, which includes churches in both D.C. and Maryland, also was assessing needs in its area. On Oct. 30, a feeding unit of the Baptist Convention of Maryland-Delaware began operations in Salisbury, Md.
The D.C. Baptist Convention's emergency response team is assessing damage in Washington and Maryland.
|
Baptist disaster relief operations in the Northeast and West Virginia were largely being conducted as part of long-standing collaborations among state Baptist conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. In addition to the Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland-Delaware state organizations, that included the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, as well as conventions in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New England, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania-South Jersey, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Associated Baptist Press reported that officials of the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey were trying to contact pastors and churches across its state Oct. 30 to assess damage and identify emergency needs.
“We are a fellowship of 284 churches and 320 pastors, and so this will take some time,” Lee Spitzer, the group’s executive minister and senior regional pastor, said an email. “We are using every means at our disposal, including phone calls, Facebook, Constant Contact and e-mails. Difficulties we currently face are loss of power in many communities throughout the state, road closings, Internet service provider outages and inability to reach pastors and other leaders who may not be near their means of communication because they are out and about in their neighborhoods.”
Spitzer told ABP his goal is to have a comprehensive report in time for a conference call Nov. 1 for regional and national leaders of the American Baptist Churches USA to coordinate their response through One Great Hour of Sharing, an ecumenical relief program with nine participating communions, including American Baptists.
“I anticipate that dozens of ABCNJ churches will need assistance as they recover from Hurricane Sandy,” Spitzer said. “Damage from both wind and water has been extensive across the state, and communities near the Jersey shore, where we have many churches, have no doubt been impacted.”
Spitzer said many of those churches are smaller than 150 members and worship in older building structures more susceptible to damage.
NABF, Lott Carey activate networks
Meanwhile, both the North American Baptist Fellowship, a regional fellowship of the Baptist World Alliance, and the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention, a historically African-American body, were initiating responses in the region.
George Bullard, NABF general secretary, activated the group’s disaster response network and said on its website that he had made contact with “many leaders of various Baptist denominational organizations from Virginia to Maine, in Canada, and as far west as Ohio to express our prayerful support to them. I have also asked them to feel free to contact us if the resources available to them are insufficient and they need the assistance of our network.”
The Lott Carey convention had 40 people in the Mid-Atlantic region, 30 persons in training by the American Red Cross and volunteers in New York on standby, according to a BWA press release.
“We identified churches in Northern Virginia, Washington D.C. and Baltimore to be on standby should they be needed for service,” David Goatley, executive secretary-treasurer of Lott Carey, told the BWA.
“A number of churches and congregants in our network are without power, but their damage seems moderate,” said Goatley. “We have about a dozen churches in New York and New Jersey that are being activated for collaboration with the American Red Cross to provide relief support to survivors.”
Devastation in the Caribbean
In the Caribbean, where Cuba and Haiti were especially hard hit as Sandy passed through, both the BWA and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship were initiating relief operations.
At least 52 people died and 200,000 displaced in Haiti, still struggling from a devastating earthquake in 2010. Many Cubans were without shelter or electricity and in Santiago, on the eastern end of the island, there was “chaos,” Joel Dupont, president of the Baptist Convention of Eastern Cuba, told the BWA.
Everton Jackson, executive/secretary of the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship, said tens of thousands in his region are in “dire need for food, water and temporary shelter.”
The BWA has allocated $20,000 to the Caribbean through Baptist World Aid, the global organization’s relief and development arm.
The CBF and its Florida affiliate have allocated $6,000 to purchase food for distribution in Santiago and sent a representative to oversee the operation.
“Pray for her as she leaves on Tuesday morning [Oct. 30] for a week-long trip into very, very difficult circumstances,” Ray Johnson, CBF of Florida coordinator, wrote on the CBF’s website.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.