Alabama Baptists top 600 volunteer workdays, near ‘disaster fatigue’

In the wake of back-to-back hurricanes, Alabama Baptist volunteers are still “all over the map,” said Tommy Puckett, state disaster relief director.

“When we shut down our feeding unit in Texas City (Texas), we had prepared over 76,000 meals in the eight days we had worked,” Puckett said. In recent days, Southern Baptists as a whole passed the 2 million mark in hot meals served to victims of the two storms.

Since Hurricanes Gustav and Ike hit, Alabama Baptist volunteers have put in more than 600 workdays out of state, he said.

“Now our Alabama teams are working on assessment, cleanup and recovery,” Puckett said.

A team from Baldwin Baptist Association that was doing cleanup and recovery work in Texas City has been replaced by teams from Montgomery, Calhoun, Birmingham and Limestone Baptist associations.

At press time, Puckett said he didn’t know yet whether the community would need more teams to be sent in after those.

And in Louisiana, cleanup and recovery teams from Elmore, Cleburne and Escambia Baptist associations were working in the Sulphur/Lake Charles area while teams from St. Clair, Sand Mountain, Mud Creek and Columbia Baptist associations cleaned up in Bugue, just south of Houma.

“We’re probably not going to send any more teams into the Sulphur/Lake Charles area,” Puckett said, noting more teams would probably be needed in Bugue.

“We’re getting close to disaster fatigue — big time. It’s not just our state, that goes for a number of states,” he said. “Hopefully teams will continue to rise up to go if there continues to be a need.” (TAB, BP)