As Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Grand Isle, La., at 6 a.m. Aug. 29, Southern Baptist disaster relief teams, including 150 Alabama disaster relief volunteers, were at the ready.
While the Category 4 storm with maximum winds of 140 mph battered the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, disaster relief officials were on the phones, planning their response.
And as the winds died down, waves subsided and floodwaters receded, disaster relief volunteers began pouring into the affected areas, armed with food, chainsaws, shovels, warm smiles and steady shoulders to lean on.
Wherever a disaster occurs, Southern Baptist disaster relief is there, ready to respond. “Most people aren’t aware that Southern Baptists are the third largest disaster relief force in the country,” said Claude Rhea, development director for the North American Mission Board (NAMB), which coordinates multistate disaster response.
Building partnerships
Southern Baptist disaster relief has more than 600 mobile disaster response units and 30,000 trained volunteers. State Baptist conventions recruit and train volunteers from Southern Baptist churches, and NAMB then coordinates the multistate and international responses done by Southern Baptist disaster relief.
After the response of Southern Baptist disaster relief to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the national media began talking of the volunteers in the same sentences as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Salvation Army and the Red Cross.
In the days following the four hurricanes of 2004 and after the tsunami response in December 2004 in Asia, disaster relief teams have been some of the first allowed into areas for assessment and initial relief responses.
“There is a recognition of the importance of our people and the ministry we render,” said Tommy Puckett, director of disaster relief for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM). “We have an equal partnership with the agencies, and each has its own role.”
This time, just hours after Katrina’s landfall, 29 feeding units were activated at the request of the Red Cross and Salvation Army.
As of press time, more than 1,200 volunteers and approximately 130 mobile disaster relief units from across the nation had been activated and were stationed in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia (see map, above).
Puckett noted that many more units and teams will be called on before the response ends. Some may serve twice as teams rotate out to allow volunteers to rest after days of intensive work.
Baptist Press reported that the response to Hurricane Katrina will be the largest ever undertaken by disaster relief.
“We’ve worked for 35 years to build capacity to respond to something like this. It will be a major test,” said Jim Burton, director of volunteer mobilization for NAMB in Alpharetta, Ga.
Puckett noted, “This is the worst natural disaster we’ve ever had to face. You could put (hurricanes) Dennis, Ivan, Camille and Betsy all together, and it still wouldn’t be anything close to Katrina.
“We redefined catastrophic,” he said.
While the disaster relief teams are working valiantly to minister to the victims, conditions after Katrina made it hard for teams to get to and fulfill their assignments.
“We had one unit assigned to New Orleans (Aug. 30), but it was stopped by the Mississippi State Patrol and has since been reassigned to Baton Rouge,” Burton said.
Baptist Press and other media also reported shortages of food, water and ice in the days immediately after the hurricane.
Not only were these scarce or nonexistent in the areas hit by Katrina but also the disaster relief teams were running low.
Puckett said it was not uncommomon for supplies to run low in the days immediately following a disaster. “Sometimes water and ice will arrive sooner rather than later, but in a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, the initial difficulties in the delivery of resources should be expected,” he said.
Burton noted that Southern Baptist Disaster Relief works closely with and gets supplies from FEMA and the Red Cross. These agencies were “working feverishly” to remedy the supply problems and had a solution in sight, he said at press time. “This is the worst disaster in U.S. history,” Burton said. “It’s stretching the infrastructure and resources that were available.
“The reality is that some (feeding) teams are going to run out of supplies (during disaster relief responses),” he continued. “But that doesn’t mean they quit cooking. They can stay and minister in other ways.”
The monetary costs of Katrina are also huge. Last year’s four major storms in the Southeast cost about $23 billion, but early estimates of Katrina’s damage already exceed $25 billion, according to reports.
Mississippi’s Gulf Coast bore the brunt of Katrina’s wrath. Gulfshore Baptist Assembly in Pass Christian was severly damaged by Katrina’s storm surge but is still structurally sound, according to Gulfport native Kiely Young of the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board.
Two visible churches on the coast — First Baptist Church, Gulfport, and First Baptist Church, Long Beach — have been esentially destroyed.
Four days after Katrina hit, authorities said the death toll reached into the hundreds.
In New Orleans, the broken levees flooded the city’s streets with a mixture of gasoline, garbage and sewage. Along with New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary all four Baptist ministry centers in New Orleans closed and the missionaries were evacuated, as was the staff of the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans.
Katrina extended her reach eastward to Alabama (see story, page1) and into Carrollton, Ga., causing tornado damage there.
The immediate focus of Southern Baptist disaster relief teams was Louisiana and Mississippi, with a feeding unit in Biloxi, Miss., serving 5,000 meals Sept. 1.
Other teams are stationed in Carrollton, Ga., and Mobile. Moffett Road Baptist Church, Mobile, was the central station for disaster relief efforts in Mobile County.
Puckett said as the state’s disaster relief teams finish responding to needs in their own areas, they will most likely be sent to Mobile to help, then head over to Mississippi and Louisiana.
Ongoing relief efforts
An Alabama shower unit and communications unit were also initially stationed in Biloxi.
Puckett said as the relief work goes on, the need for volunteers with abilities not related to the initial needs will become apparent.
For those wishing to help after the first wave of relief efforts, updates and needs will be posted regularly on the SBOM Web site, www.alsbom.org, Puckett said.
LifeWay Christian Resources, meanwhile, has announced that it is donating $10,000 each to the Baptist state conventions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to assist in their disaster relief efforts in the wake of Katrina.
LifeWay is working directly with churches in the three states to restore damaged libraries and lost curriculums at deep discounts.
Other Baptist groups are also responding to the calls for help from the affected areas.
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) has pulled together three teams to travel to Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Alabama CBF is joining efforts with Volunteers of America, a national faith-based group, to help residents in Bayou La Batre.
And Baptist World Aid is collecting monetary donations from Baptists around the world wishing to help their brothers and sisters in their time of need. (Wire services contributed)
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