About a week and a half after Hurricane Idalia hit the Florida Gulf Coast, Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief work is still ongoing in Florida and Georgia.
Mark Wakefield, state disaster relief strategist, said volunteers are just days away from wrapping up their work cleaning out flooded homes and serving meals to the community in Florida while a team from Calhoun Baptist Association is headed to Valdosta, Georgia, to help with clearing fallen trees.
More than 80 ABDR volunteers have deployed so far to help victims of Idalia, which made landfall Aug. 30 near Keaton Beach, Florida, as a Category 3 storm.
Helping carry the burden
Wakefield said the ABDR volunteers in Florida — based out of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Inverness, Florida — found that the small towns along the coast were isolated and local restaurants were doing all they could to squeeze their inventory to feed the residents there.
“For a few days, our crews were able to prepare 150 to 175 meals in addition to feeding our volunteers,” he said.
Cleanup crews have received 101 job requests, but many of those were taken care of before teams got to them, Wakefield said. He said he expected work there to be wrapped up by Friday and for volunteers to have worked 48 jobs total.
As of Monday (Sept. 11), teams had also celebrated one new profession of faith in Christ.
For more information about ABDR, visit sbdr.org.
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