Southern Baptist response to the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina can be seen most visibly by the thousands of disaster relief volunteers who are into the third week of relief efforts.
At press time, more than 5,000 volunteers were actively deployed on the field in some aspect of disaster relief in five states — Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
With an estimated 925 Southern Baptist churches in the three states destroyed or severely damaged, according to Baptist Press, and news reports of a death toll above 700, the needs continue to be great, especially as damage estimates loom above $100 billion.
Officials estimate that more than 1 million residents of the Gulf Coast will be unable to return for months to the homes they evacuated because of the hurricane. About half of those displaced are from New Orleans.
Alabama teams move
Of the thousands of Southern Baptists volunteering on the Gulf Coast, 130 are Alabama Baptists from 14 associations, according to the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions’ (SBOM) Web site. So far, as many as 20 associations have been involved in the response as some teams have completed assignments and rotated out with replacement teams.
Tommy Puckett, SBOM director of disaster relief, said Alabama’s disaster relief teams have begun closing down the response in Mobile and are moving to work in other areas.
According to the SBOM Web site, at press time, a shower trailer, disaster relief unit and feeding unit are in Bayou La Batre; a feeding team is working in Slidell, La.; shower units are in Pascagoula, Miss., and Biloxi, Miss.; and a rotation for cleanup/recovery teams into and out of Biloxi has been established and will continue through Oct. 1, Puckett said.
“We are pretty well ingrained with the work in Biloxi,” he said, noting that the state’s disaster relief unit had been put on alert for Hurricane Ophelia relief but had not been activated at press time. Other diaster relief teams and units in Alabama had not been placed on alert.
According to Joe Conway, spokesman for Southern Baptist disaster relief, no disaster relief teams or units had been sent to the area affected by Ophelia, although a feeding unit nearby was preparing to respond and four other units had been put on standby.
“It’s a little early for assessment,” Conway said. He predicted crews to clean up from wind damage, storm surge and flooding would be needed once assessments were complete.
Puckett said by the time the state’s disaster relief unit ceased feeding operations in Mobile after Katrina, disaster relief workers had cooked 76,480 meals. Feeding units also worked in other parts of the state. Providing food for shelters in their areas, the feeding unit from Birmingham Baptist Association cooked approximately 24,000 meals before shutting down, and volunteers from Tuscaloosa Baptist Association had cooked almost 2,000 meals at press time.
Child-care volunteers ministered to children in an Atlanta shelter while their parents went through the necessary processes to receive aid.
Overall, disaster relief volunteers have provided a record-breaking response, coming from 36 state conventions to prepare more than 2.4 million meals, complete 3,379 cleanup/recovery jobs and clean 3,354 loads of laundry within 22 days of the response to Katrina, according to the North American Mission Board (NAMB).
Alabama Baptists untrained in Southern Baptist disaster relief who wish to help can also call a volunteer hotline, located at SBOM (see story, page 1). Those who know of places that need volunteers can also call the hotline.
Puckett noted that there has been an increase in interest by those wishing to be certified in Southern Baptist disaster relief training.
“We are excited about the interest of people who want to be trained in disaster relief,” he said.
He said the next round of certified training events will begin in February 2006. Training events earlier than that would be hard to schedule because those who would conduct those events are unavailable for one of three reasons:
—They are actively working in disaster relief efforts in Alabama, Mississippi or Louisiana.
—They are serving in disaster relief administration and planning in the offices of state conventions, Baptist associations and NAMB.
—They are meeting the obligations of employment and family following their return from several days of deployment to hurricane-damaged areas.
Southern Baptists are also working to reunite family and friends separated by the hurricane.
Baptist Press reported that the Survivor Information Database, at www.SBC.net, is available for those searching for persons displaced by the hurricane and for those who were displaced to alert family and friends as to their condition and location.
“All of the information in the database is available to the public, so people using the (database) should only include phone numbers, e-mail or personal information that they want published,” said Chris Chapman, director of information systems for the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee and manager of the Web site.
Those wishing to give financial support to the relief efforts should make checks payable to the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions and indicate that the gift is for Hurricane Katrina relief.
Checks can be mailed to the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, P.O. Box 11870, Montgomery, AL 36111.
For more information about disaster relief efforts visit www.thealabamabaptist.org or www.alsbom.org.
(Keith Hinson contributed)
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