From the Worldwide Faith News archives www.wfn.org
Carolina Presbyterians Still Struggling After Storm
From
PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>
Date
15 Oct 1999 20:51:08
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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