From acting as staging points to providing a place to sleep, Baptist churches across south Alabama are welcoming Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers in the wake of Hurricane Ivan.
Tommy Puckett, director of disaster relief for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), said the mobilization of volunteers has been a “grueling month and a half” in the wake of Hurricanes Charlie, Frances and Ivan.
“This is the most intense, ongoing scattered disaster ever in [disaster relief’s] history,” Puckett said. “Nowhere have we been called on this many times. We’re running thin.”
That, added to needs in the home areas of many Alabama teams means the majority of volunteers responding to Ivan in south Alabama are from out-of-state.
Approximately 400 volunteers from Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, California and Mississippi have poured into the region, joining forces with Alabama Baptists to meet cleanup and recovery, chainsaw and food needs.
Puckett said he expects the relief effort to last for some weeks. “This is not one of those disasters you get over with in one week,” he said. This is long-term, and by long-term I mean three to four weeks out.”
Donald Kimbell, operations officer for incident command with the North American Mission Board (NAMB), said the number of volunteers would likely increase.
Kimbell, who is coordinating a command center housed in the basement of the SBOM building in Montgomery, also said the center would stay in place until October as efforts continue to help victims in both Alabama and Florida.
Larry Patterson, director of missions (DOM) for Baldwin Association, commended the disaster relief teams working in the association.
He added that he had been working with the feeding team at First Baptist Church, Robertsdale, and credit them for the hot meals they shared.
“We couldn’t do what we’re doing without the Salvation Army,” he said. “It’s their feeding station, and Southern Baptists are cooking and serving.”
Even Rick Lance, executive director of SBOM, pitched in, traveling to Robertsdale to run hot meals out to waiting cars. He said crises like Ivan equalize the community.
“While I was serving the food in Robertsdale, I saw upscale SUVs and older cars all waiting in line for the same thing — a hot meal and a helping hand,” Lance said.
Lance was in the process of traveling the areas hit by Ivan, surveying the damage. “I was amazed at the breadth of the areas affected by Ivan. The hurricane is well named ‘Ivan the Terrible,’” he said.
Lance commended the leadership of Patterson and Pat Andrews, DOM of the hard-hit Escambia Association.
First Baptist Church, Orange Beach, housed some disaster relief volunteers in its educational space.
Pastor John Price said he is thankful the teams are working in the community. “They’ll do a tremendous job and be a great witness in the community,” he said.
Kay Cassibry, state director of Mississippi Woman’s Missionary Union, led the feeding team from that state based at the church, and explained its willingness to help. “We know Alabama (teams) are stretched out all over the place,” she said.
Cassibry lived in Elberta as a child when her father was pastor of First Baptist Church, Elberta, and continued to visit her grandparents in south Alabama.
“I grew up in this area, so when you come in and see it, it breaks your heart,” Cassibry said. “It’s a hard-hit area.”
Cassibry emphasized that the teams’ missions extend beyond meeting immediate needs.
“What we hope to do is help churches make a stronger connection in the community because we’ll leave but the church will still be there,” she said.
Lance commended the disaster relief teams for that witness and purpose. “This a vital way to offer an incarnational witness for Jesus Christ. I personally heard accounts of people professing their faith in Christ as a result of these labors of love,” he said.
One disaster relief team is so used to being activated that it found a way to serve despite being told to stand down.
Patterson said Baldwin Association’s team was told to tend for its own needs and let other teams be activated to help.
But as their needs are taken care of, members are stepping in to help other disaster relief teams serving in the area.
“Even though we’re not on call, we’re still very active,” said Patterson. “We have made our equipment available to teams here.”
He explained that the association has several larger saws that are needed by chainsaw crews working in the area.
“All the teams are using (Baldwin’s resources) to keep their saws sharpened,” Patterson noted.
Baldwin is also housing several disaster relief volunteers at its Camp Baldwin along with about 250 power and telephone company crew members.
Southern Baptist chaplains are also providing counseling services with disaster relief teams at several sites including Robertsdale, Flomaton, Andalusia, Gulf Shores, Mobile, Bay Minette, Grove Hill and Orange Beach.
Alabama Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) has also been active after Ivan, helping to clean up and distributing money donated to the relief efforts. United Recovery Systems, a debt collection agency in Houston, Texas, donated $100,000 to Alabama CBF. Alabama CBF Coordinator Mart Gray said the donor sent $50,000 in building materials and a matching cash donation with stipulations that the donation be split between a Caucasian church and an African-American church in the Mobile area.
Gray said CBF-affiliated First Baptist Church, Mobile, and Highpoint Baptist Church in nearby Eight Mile were the recipients of that donation.
South Alabama churches help members, communities
Homes demolished — moved from their foundations. Layers of mud and silt on the floors. Belongings swept up by the storm surge found a block away. Watermarks four feet high on some walls. Roofs peeled off. Businesses gone.
Even in the midst of such devastation and loss after Hurricane Ivan, Alabama’s Baptist churches stand as bastions of light and strength for their members and communities.
Baldwin Baptist Association’s churches are in some of the hardest-hit areas, and received most of the storm’s damage to churches. Romar Beach Baptist Church, Gulf Shores, was demolished, with only its sign left to mark the spot where the church had stood.
Although still standing, Oyster Bay Baptist Church saw some of the most damage from Ivan. Sitting on Plash Island between Mobile Bay, Oyster Bay and the Bon Secour River, the church’s five buildings withstood the onslaught of a storm surge reaching as high as seven feet. All buildings but one were flooded and are now covered with mud from the waters.
Pastor Jerry Peebles estimated that about 80 percent of the church’s 400 members experienced moderate to total losses of property and homes. “This has kind of crippled us because nobody can step up and help each other, because we’re all riding in the same boat now.”
Despite such staggering circumstances, Peebles said the spirit of the 150-year-old church is still strong. “We’ve got flooded buildings, damaged buildings, but the church has not gone away. We’re still here,” he said.
Which is why he decided to hold services Sept. 19, the first Sunday after Ivan roared through. The church’s sanctuary was newer and higher than the other buildings and did not flood.
Peebles said many church members insisted on gathering to praise and worship God for bringing them and their families safely through the storm. Peebles said no church members were injured or killed.
He added that the Sunday service showed the community the church was continuing to persevere. “[The church members] will be resilient and come back again, probably better than before.”
Although many are focusing on their own needs, as time goes on the focus is turning outward, as evidenced at First Baptist Church, Gulf Shores.
Pastor Lloyd Stilley said the church — which suffered damage to the steeple and so had some water damage — was beginning to look at long-range strategies for helping those who had long-term problems, such as no home or had a house but nothing in it.
Stilley said the church is also housing Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers from Illinois. “We’ve had an amazing response from our disaster relief teams,” he said.
Other less damaged churches in Gulf Shores are also hosting disaster relief teams or performing their own relief.
Lagoon Baptist Church prepared meals three times a day for anyone who wanted them. The church, where Salam Shorrosh is pastor, is also housing some people who have no homes or who cannot return home at the moment.
Church secretary Angie Dailey said Ivan brought church members closer. “There’s a great community effort to get things going as well as we can.”
She said the church had water damage in the sanctuary from the storm surge and trees down in the yard, although none had hit the church.
First Baptist Church, Orange Beach, is also hosting disaster relief teams. Pastor John Price said the church’s minimal damage could not compare with what many had. Ivan’s 140 mph winds peeled back a section of the church’s metal roof, letting in rain and knocking off shingles on another part of the roof.
In Mobile Association, fewer churches suffered damage of the magnitude in Baldwin.
However, Dauphin Island Baptist Church had water damage from the storm surge in both the church and its resort ministry building. Sonrise Baptist Church had a large section of its roof torn off and suffered water damage. The associational building had a tree fall across the front, but it did not knock down the wall.
The majority of the state’s churches damaged by Ivan had damage to shingles, minor water damage and trees down in yards.
Hurricane Baptist member aids neighbors with 4-wheeler, ice
“What are friends for?”
That’s the philosophy that drove Randy Duncan to spend countless hours making ice and delivering it to his neighbors following Hurricane Ivan’s wrath. That’s the sentiment that drove him to go from house to house to house, checking on his friends, maintaining their generators, and ensuring that all was well in spite of Hurricane Ivan’s assault on Choctaw County — which left countless residents without electricity for more than a week.
But neighbors say it’s more than friendship. They say it comes from a man who would sacrifice everything for the sake of someone else.
Duncan and his neighbors, ironically, live in a community called Hurricane, a remote area in the southern portion of Choctaw County. Hurricane Baptist Church, Choctaw Association, is the focal point of much of the community’s life — a community that is collectively praising the actions of one of its own.
“Randy Duncan has been an angel to us,” said neighbor Carvel Richard. “We call him our ‘angel on a 4-wheeler.’”
Duncan, 47, has multiple health problems. He has had three strokes, three heart attacks, has a pacemaker, wears a brace on his leg and suffers seizures on a regular basis. “Because of his seizures, he can’t drive a car,” explained Richard. “But that didn’t stop him. He got on his 4-wheeler and went from house to house helping everyone.”
Although the effort took a toll on his health, he trudged throughout the neighborhood and delivered ice to at least 18 families.
In a community where Hurricane is an everyday word and neighborly love abounds, Duncan and his neighbors are now working to get their lives back to normal following the storm.
And they are doing it together.
Beatrice church turns power loss into party to save food
In many rural Alabama areas, it is taking crews a while to restore power. Some churches are making the most of their uncomfortable situations by combining their resources and sharing with their fellow man.
In the small south Alabama town of Beatrice, community residents combined their refrigerated and frozen food items and cooked out on grills when they realized their food would spoil before the electricity could be restored, according to Claudia Smith, Beatrice Baptist Church secretary.
“It’s been a communitywide effort,” she said. “Everybody’s been sharing whatever they have … food, water, ice, generators. One of our church deacons has a logging company and he has had his crew and equipment in here getting trees off people’s houses.”
Smith noted that working together is just a way of life for Beatrice residents. “Everybody in town has pitched in and helped each other. It’s just the way people in Beatrice are — giving and sharing and seeing that everybody is taken care of.”
At one point, a local store owner gave away perishable items while another person used a relief truck to give away free ice, she noted.
Even though Beatrice is located less than 150 miles from Gulf Shores, residents experienced little rain and no flooding.
FBC Monroeville rumors unfounded
First Baptist Church, Monroeville, became a temporary shelter for more than 30 Florida nursing home residents and staff escaping Hurricane Ivan’s wind and water. But a few days later, the hurricane left First, Monroeville, with no electricity and it became too hot for the nursing home residents to stay in the facility, according to Pastor Gary Miller.
“Fans were hooked up to the generator, but Friday it got really hot and humid,” said Miller. “So people were transported to Frisco City.”
On the move to Frisco City, volunteers and medical personnel helped the group onto buses, ambulances and one helicopter to evacuate. Some residents were taken to a local hospital due to the heat, but no one sustained serious injuries, Miller said.
“There were many rumors going around the state about the roof caving in and possible loss of life and serious injuries,” Miller said, referring to First, Monroeville. “Those rumors were totally unfounded.
“I’m glad that we were able to be a shelter in a time of storm not just for the residents of the nursing home but for 25 to 30 of our own community members as well.”
Baldwin camp suffers damage, staffers safe
The eastern side of the eye of Hurricane Ivan’s fury plowed through the 66-acre Camp Baldwin of Baldwin Baptist Association — while many of its staff members were riding out the storm on campus.
Although one staff trailer was literally “cut in half” by a large tree, according to camp director David Payne, no one was inside. He said part of the staff had gathered inside a new multipurpose building, which was built to withstand hurricane-force winds up to 140 mph.
“You could hear the roof beams creaking as they stretched from the force of wind, but the building stood firm,” Payne said. “I thought it was worse than [Hurricane] Frederick (1979) — at least here where we were. It just kept coming and coming.”
The 13 people peered out at times from the building to watch winds taking down tree after tree. More than 100 trees, most of them large oaks or pines, crashed to the ground across the campus, but no buildings were hit.
“The oaks and pines have been here a long time, creating so much ambience on the campus. But trees can be replaced — in time,” he said.
None of the trees fell into the prayer garden, allowing a prayer bench and cross to remain unscathed, noted Marsha Graham, receptionist/reservationist for the camp. Graham was on campus during the storm.
The campus also lost the pier that stretched out into Wolf Bay and its bridge over Wolf Bay.
While the storm raged outside, slight water damage occurred from leakage around windows and doors in the hurricane-proof building, which houses offices, a kitchen, gymnasium and conference rooms.
Even as Camp Baldwin officials regroup and clean up, the campus is serving as housing for disaster relief, power and telephone company volunteers in the area.
Baptists provide supplies, money for Caribbean after Ivan
While Hurricane Ivan pounded Alabama and its remnants returned to hit Louisiana as a tropical depression, the devastating storm also left its mark throughout the Caribbean.
Ivan has been blamed for more than 100 deaths in the Bahamas and United States. Up to 90 percent of Grenada’s buildings were damaged or destroyed, including the five Baptist church buildings. Ten Jamaican Baptist churches had extensive damage.
Carter Davis, administrative associate for the Middle America and Caribbean Region, said the churches had varying degrees of roof damage. “The International Mission Board (IMB) will provide the resources to get the church buildings repaired,” Davis said.
The IMB also shipped food, plastic sheeting and tarps to Grenada and roofing materials to Barbados, according to Mark Kelly, IMB spokesperson.
Volunteers from Texas Baptist Men also have performed preliminary counseling, medical and damage assessments in Grenada.
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) gave $5,000 to the Bahamas and $10,000 to Haiti.
The IMB also plans to help Haiti, Jamaica, Grand Cayman and the Bahamas, officials reported.
Baptist World Alliance (BWA) sent sent $5,000 of aid through BWAID to the Jamaica Baptist Union. BWA officials also sent a letter of support to Jamaican Baptists. (Compiled from wire services)
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