wfn.org | Carolina Presbyterians Still Struggling After Storm

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

15-October-1999 
99347 
 
    Carolina Presbyterians Still Struggling 
    `to Get the Muck Out' After Storm 
 
    Post-hurricane floods welcomed tadpoles, snakes into the churches 
 
    by Alexa Smith and John Filiatreau 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - In two coastal North Carolina presbyteries hit hard by 
Hurricane Floyd and related flooding, most of the damage was suffered by 
Presbyterians, not Presbyterian churches. 
 
    Each presbytery has one church that reported severe damage - Hallsville 
Presbyterian Church in the Presbytery of Coastal Carolina, and Howard 
Memorial Presbyterian of Tarboro in the Presbytery of New Hope. 
 
    Both presbyteries are still conducting assessments of damages and 
needs. New Hope Presbytery is running at least five service centers in the 
flood zone, where volunteers gather for clean-up service and help 
distribute water, toiletries and cleaning supplies. 
 
    "We've got about 10 counties to cover, and about four are fairly 
critical," the Rev. Al Brough, coordinator of disaster relief in the 
Presbytery of Coastal Carolina, told the Presbyterian News Service.  "We're 
getting reps in each county to do needs-assessments - figures; so we can 
look at the scope of what we need to do, and what the costs are. 
 
    "Then we'll go to the presbytery and determine what piece of that we 
can handle," Brough explained. "We're talking here about damage to church 
structures, about people in the Presbyterian church and people in the 
surrounding community." 
 
    The congregation of Rev. Robert Sandercock - Hallsville Presbyterian in 
rural Duplin County - is still drying out from the drenching it took when 
the northeast branch of the Cape Fear River overflowed. 
 
     Old-timers say they haven't seen anything like it since 1918. 
 
    "You can drive up Route 41 and see the debris," said Sandercock, who 
allows that Hallsville isn't as bad-off as towns like Tarboro and 
Greensville, which are just one river valley over. "There's carpet, 
insulation, furniture, all stacked up. It's a horrible situation ... We 
lost the carpeting throughout the building. The pews fell apart. The water 
came up the wall three feet or so. The education building and the manse 
were covered with water halfway up the first floor. 
 
    "The piano was saved. We got the hymnals out ... We have good walls, 
good roofs and pretty good floors." 
 
    The disinfected education building is now where the congregation 
worships - on pews found in a nearby Baptist church and a local antique 
store. 
 
    As Sandercock said, the situation is even worse in towns like Tarboro, 
where the usually placid river known ironically as "the mighty Tar," 
recently lived up to the nickname. Although the storm blew itself out three 
weeks ago and a two-week-long curfew has been lifted, the tobacco is laying 
flat in the fields, the usually fluffy white cotton crop has rotted, and 
the peanuts and soybeans are molding. 
 
    "We won't be back in our church for a year," said the Rev. Robert 
Burns, pastor of the heavily damaged Howard Memorial Presbyterian, which 
was preparing to celebrate its 125th anniversary when it was filled with 
water: five-and-a-half feet in the education building, two-and-a-half in 
the sanctuary and 18 feet in the basement. "Everything we didn't move up to 
the second floor, we lost: tables in the Fellowship Hall, our 100-year-old 
pews, our organ - which we just rebuilt, at a cost of $125,000 - all our 
heating and air conditioning, our telephone system, and right now we're 
praying that our landscaping is going to survive. We had workers out there 
pressure-washing the shrubbery. Ten days after the flood started, we still 
had 18 inches in the [church] building. 
 
    "We also had tadpoles, live bream (sunfish) - and snakes." 
 
    Burns said most of his parishioners survived with their property 
intact. But that's not the case in many places. 
 
    At Pisgah Presbyterian Church, in nearby Rocky Mount, the Rev. Alvin O. 
Mills said eight members of his congregation were completely flooded out - 
their furniture lost, their clothes gone, their cars destroyed. 
 
    "They had to move all their belongings out of the house and put them on 
the streets to be taken by the trash people," Mills said. "And these were 
elderly people who have been retired many, many years ago. Now they're 
totally, shockingly devastated ... they're staying with friends and 
relatives." 
 
    Mills, who joked that his congregation has "106 members - six or seven 
reliable, contributing members, and a string of young people" - said Mt. 
Pisgah, one of the presbytery's makeshift service centers, had been 
distributing 150 to 200 bags of food every day, seven days a week, since 
the flood. 
 
    He was trying to look on the bright side. 
 
    "The television cable was out, our power was out for several days, and 
I saw people sitting on their steps, or out in the yard in lawn chairs - 
blacks and whites sitting on each other's lawns, having cookouts and 
picnics," he said about a week ago. "I drove around last Sunday, and you 
should have seen them eating together, drinking together, conversing 
together, children playing together - and nobody killing each other." 
 
    "Tarboro and Princeville are still somewhat under water," he added. "We 
thank God for what we have." 
 
    The Rev. Barbara Campbell Davis, the executive of the Presbytery of New 
Hope, said she is still tallying up the damages. Her office in Rocky Mount 
overlooks the normally prosperous Terry Town Mall, which she describes now 
as "a ghost town" because of flood damage. "There are not as many church 
buildings as church members involved in this," she said. "It got the rich 
and it got the poor. This was an equal-opportunity flood. No one was 
slighted." 
 
    Stan Hankins, a spokesman for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s 
Disaster Assistance Office, said the denomination has forwarded $115,000 in 
relief aid to the Carolinas - $50,000 to New Hope Presbytery, $50,000 to 
Coastal Carolina Presbytery, and $15,000 to the North Carolina Interfaith 
Disaster Response Network. 
 
    Diana Poythress, an assistant in the New Hope presbytery office, who 
has been taking phone calls and helping with coordination of volunteers for 
cleanup teams, said some Carolinians are just now getting back to their 
waterlogged towns and beginning to tabulate what repairs will cost. 
 
    "This really is a long-term process," said Poythress. "It's going to 
take a long time to get the muck out." 

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