SBTC DR crews brave heat and humidity to help Ida survivors

HAMMOND, La.  Battling mosquitoes, poison ivy and the lack of electrical power, Southern Baptists of Texas Convention disaster relief volunteers endured sweltering temperatures and soaring humidity to assist survivors of Hurricane Ida, which struck Louisiana on Sunday, Aug. 29, 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina blasted ashore.

Crews continue to serve, even though Hurricane Nicholas made landfall as a category 1 storm at 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 14, southwest of Sargent Beach, Texas, and moved toward Louisiana.

The SBTC’s response to Katrina, led by the late Gibbie McMillan, the convention’s first director of disaster relief who died of COVID this August, marked the inaugural major deployment of SBTC DR.

SBTC DR crews continued building on McMillan’s legacy as they again traveled quickly to Louisiana, where they were joined by Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers from across the country.

Even as Ida still raged, a four-person SBTC DR incident management left Texas for Alexandria, La., where they established operations from Aug. 30-Sept. 12 to help coordinate SBDR activities across the Bayou State. A feeding team staffing the mass feeding unit from the Unity Baptist Association was soon joined by another mass feeding team and unit from First Baptist Pflugerville in Gonzales, La. New volunteers have rotated in to relieve the original crews.

To date, the feeding teams have produced more than 190,000 hot meals distributed by the Salvation Army to survivors.

West Monroe, Hammond and six other sites

Other SBTC DR workers have since joined hundreds of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers to help Louisiana in a deployment with what Scottie Stice, current SBTC DR director, called, “many moving parts.”

Shirley and Cliff Spencer of Spring set up the SBTC DR shower and laundry unit from the Bowie Baptist Association on Sept. 2 in West Monroe, where they began doing laundry for survivors at a shelter there, work that is ongoing. Other SBTC DR shower / laundry units deployed to Gonzales and Denham Springs, La. to serve both feeding teams, power line crews and recovery units. Some of the shower / laundry units will demobilize by Sept. 17.

A quick response kitchen deployed to Denham Springs to feed DR volunteers. A second QRU set up operations in Kenner, La.

An SBTC DR utility support unit deployed to Houma to assist Alabama Baptist DR feeding efforts there, and a recovery team will work under the direction of Oklahoma DR in Morgan City, La., beginning Sept. 19.

SBTC DR recovery units also arrived, rotating in and out over ensuing weeks, working under an incident management team from Arkansas in the Hammond area.

The eight sites manned by SBTC DR volunteers by mid-September marked the most of any state Baptist DR team, Stice told the TEXAN.

Chaplains see fruit

In addition to feeding, shower / laundry and recovery crews, SBTC DR chaplains and assessors came to Louisiana.

Chaplain Wayne Barber of Jasper found unexpected opportunities to share the gospel in Hammond as he and assessor Jim Casten of Collinsville traveled through mostly middle-class and working-class neighborhoods to offer assistance.

Amazingly, Barber said, many of the gospel encounters happened seemingly at random, at addresses where the team had not intended to go.

“Every night, we just prayed for divine appointments the next day,” Barber told the TEXAN. “I asked the Lord to prepare their hearts and prepare my words.”