wfn.org | Church helps victims of recurrent flooding

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Aug. 6, 2001     News media contact: Joretta Purdue 7(202)
546-87227Washington    10-71B{339}

By United Methodist News Service

To call July a wet month in parts of the United Methodist Church's West
Virginia and Holston conferences does not begin to describe conditions in
those areas.

Six fatalities in the two areas have been blamed on flooding that began July
8. Thousands have been displaced. Hundreds of homes and at least four United
Methodist churches were damaged in West Virginia. Several churches in and
around Tazewell, Va., in the Holston Annual Conference had water in their
basements. Riverside United Methodist Church in Tazewell reported 52 inches
of the muddy stuff inundated its lower level.

Federal emergency management officials estimated that 500 homes were
destroyed and about 1,500 damaged in the flood. Two dozen West Virginia
counties and another half-dozen in Virginia had been declared disaster areas
before the last round of rain began falling.

A third deluge hit the weekend of July 28-29, marooning more than 30 people
who were having a family reunion at the Fort Blackmore Camp, operated by the
Big Stone Gap District of Holston Conference. That area, Scott County in
Virginia, sustained about $2 million in damage to roads and bridges, houses
and mobile homes, and businesses and farms, including crops, county
officials estimated.  

United Methodists responded quickly, as they did after the earlier flooding.

"On Sunday morning the churches were there," said Mary Dougherty of the Big
Stone Gap District office. 

That was also true during the first flood, which had its greatest impact in
an area along both sides of the Virginia-West Virginia border.

In the Holston Conference, local United Methodist churches quickly mobilized
to feed and house flood victims and provide work teams. The volunteers'
presence was especially noted in the small coal-mining town of Bishop, Va. 

Alexander, Boyd's Chapel and Brown's Chapel of the Bishop Circuit provided
meals for 350, until the Red Cross took over. When the Red Cross stopped
serving in the area on July 24, church members volunteered to step back up
to the stove again, according to Kevin Slimp, Holston Conference
communicator.    

United Methodists were the only disaster relief people making a coordinated
effort to help in those first few days, but other groups have arrived and
they are working together, Slimp said.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) gave each annual conference
initial $10,000 grants for relief efforts, and an additional $10,000 was
sent to West Virginia, according to Tom Hazelwood, who heads the church's
disaster network.

UMCOR also provided 1,500 clean-up buckets to flood victims in the West
Virginia Annual Conference, and it bought cleaning supplies near the areas
where they were needed in the Holston Conference. 

This assistance and future grants from UMCOR will be channeled through its
Domestic Disaster Response, Advance #901670-1. Anyone wanting to contribute
from other parts of the denomination can mark their check to UMCOR with this
information and drop the donation into a church offering plate.

In Sevierville, Tenn., members of First United Methodist Church loaded up
the appliances from an apartment building on their property and trucked the
items to the flooded area of Virginia for use in rebuilding homes, Slimp
said. The apartment building is being removed.

For areas most severely affected by the first flood, a second and third bout
of flooding set back the process of recovery, said Hazelwood. Structures
must dry out after all the ruined carpeting and dry wall are removed in the
initial cleanup phase.

Many of the affected communities and "hollers" were struggling with poverty
before the floods came, Hazelwood said.

"This is a real opportunity for the church," he said. The pastors will do a
lot of case management to help people, many of whom distrust government, he
added.

A major issue now is sanitation because some of the areas had neither septic
nor sewer systems. Without one or the other, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency is not releasing the mobile homes that were brought in for
flood victims, Hazelwood said.

Extensive strip mining, clear-cutting of timber and the presence of steep
slopes are being cited as contributors to the severity of the flooding, he
reported.

In its first special offering, the West Virginia Conference donated more
than $150,000 toward relief, according to Tom Burger, conference
communicator. The successive flooding was slowing down cleanup and recovery
efforts, but he said he knew of no new damage. 

Work teams from throughout the conference have been exerting great effort
and will be needed for months, he said.

Several churches in West Virginia were damaged in the July 8 floods, and
conference assistance for repairs and rebuilding those is available. Most
repairs to homes are waiting for determinations from insurance and
government offices, but the church is readying itself to ensure that no one
fails to get assistance.

Three Virginia-based nonprofit organizations, one of which is a United
Methodist Advance Special mission, pooled their resources to provide
drinking water, clothing, personal care and cleanup products to flood
victims. The Society of St. Andrew, Gleaning for the World, and New
Beginning World Outreach together distributed $235,250 worth of supplies.

Gleaning for the World is a Concord-based Christian ministry that provides
domestic and international disaster help. It obtained 8,000 gallons of
bottled water, clothing, personal care and cleaning items, plus 400
mattresses and box springs and a variety of other items. 

The Society of St. Andrew, a United Methodist Advance Special (#801600-0)
and hunger-relief ministry based in Big Island, paid to have the water
bottled and covered the cost of shipping six tractor-trailer loads of items,
including two truckloads of the water, into Bishop. There, the items were
put into the hands of New Beginning World Outreach, which ministers to the
needy in Appalachia. 

"Relief efforts will continue for the next month or more," said Marian
Kelly, the Society of St. Andrew's Potato Project director. "The Society of
St. Andrew will no doubt be shipping them tractor-trailer loads of potatoes
and other food in the coming weeks." 

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United Methodist News Service
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