Friday, September 02, 2005
Hurricane update from Alabama
Pastor David writes:
A number of churches have made inquiries about Zion and the Gulf Coast. Here's a thumbnail sketch as of noon today.
I think they said it was a storm with an eye of 902 microbars, the most intense storm ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico. By now you have heard that it came ashore near New Orleans as a Category 4 hurricane, but the storm extended a couple hundred miles on all sides, definitely carrying hurricane winds perhaps 200 miles from its center. It remained a hurricane for over ten hours after it came ashore, remarkable in itself. We were perhaps 150 miles from the storm center, and endured hurricane winds throughout the day where we were. Mobile, about a half hour drive on the west from us, and Mobile Bay had major flooding, a storm surge may have reached 18 feet in the Bay--parts of Mobile were flooded and total rainfall exceeded 12 inches there in less than 24 hours. Louisiana and Mississippi took major damage and the county immediately south of Mobile also took heavy hits with the flooding along the coast of Alabama being significant. (It would have made the news except for New Orleans.) Those who experienced Hurricane Georges feel the flooding with Hurricane Katrina is worse; the extent of damage was worse than Camille 30 years ago.We boarded up our windows and "hunkered" down through the storm. Our power was out for 6 to 7 hours, but there are 900,000 people still without electricity on the coast and it is expected that many of them will have no power for a month or more--the power grid has to be rebuilt, substation by substation and line by line in Mississippi. Our own assessment around our home in Silverhill showed some tree damage, but ours and the houses of our congregation appear intact. A curfew in the evening remains in place on the coastal counties in some municipalities. Mobile is less than 30 miles away, but our rain level is reportedly less than 5 inches, so I suspect less damage on our side of the Bay, but rest assured that there is major flooding down here with much structural damage. We heard that Redeemer Lutheran in Fairhope about 15 miles to our west on Mobile Bay has a nice hole in its sanctuary roof.
Loss of life along the shore counties in Mississippi especially and in the city of New Orleans are still emerging. We have congregational members putting up family from Mississippi and Louisiana. Shelters are up and running in our county. I attended a meeting at Loxley Church of God this morning--there is limited Emergency Management support and it is attempting to build a team of churches to serve refugees coming to their shelter when it opens.Needs are beginning to emerge. Refugees are a problem as are those who are attempting to return to their homes in Mississippi and Louisiana. Our fuel supplies are severely taxed so that gas lines are extremely long. The major east-west freeway runs through the center of our county, and people must have gas to get home, so I guess they gas up here if they can. And don't forget that it takes gas to run portable power generators. Supplies are short, but there still seems to be some. I saw gas lines today, but they appeared to be slightly shorter. Mobile is another story! The good news is that the Intercoastal Canal is again shipping fuel and a major pipeline into Alabama is again pumping fuel. Refineries are still compromised. You can't just turn them on because the refinery cooking process requires things to be turned on sequentially over a number of days.
As I see it, the biggest emerging need is related to how to absorb the refugees for a period of at least two months and probably several months beyond that. On top of that is determining how to incorporate children into a school system which is designed for much fewer children. Of course, there are job issues and that kind of thing. For shelters and food shelves, issues related to food and paper products and diapers are significant items.Zion has arranged for a local district matching grant. Thrivent will give us 50 cents for every dollar raised. Our funds raised will be directed to Hurricane Katrina Thrivent Relief. The funds may go to shelter support or to education support related to these refugees, maybe to specific refugees with identified needs. We would welcome any support in fund raising by other AFLC churches and friends. If our fund raising partners would designate funds for Katrina Thrivent matching offering, we would appreciate it. Funds could be directed to us at the address below--all funds will go through our church accounting system. If people would desire a receipt, we could probably come up with one, but with a check, I think a check would be its own receipt. Annotation of the check as "offering" would no doubt be good.
A word about World Relief--please recognize that we are not opposed to giving to World Relief per the e-mail from Pastor Lee. Our local church is in a fund-raiser mode for Baldwin County using matching funds. Yes, we would like to have you partner with us in our fund-raiser, but would urge support of whatever vehicle your church would use to get help into the dollar-pipeline to the coast area, whether it is us or World Relief or Red Cross or Salvation army.--Alabama Dave Johnson, Zion Lutheran Church, PO Box 266, Silverhill, AL 36576
