By Kristy Robinson Horine
NKyTribune reporter
The rain began on Thursday, June 23, just like The Weather Channel warned it would. Despite knowing there was a risk of flooding, West Virginians had no way to know what was about to happen.
Within hours, upwards of 10 inches of rain fell across the region. Severe thunderstorms produced an EF1 Tornado. The Elk River, which flows for 172 miles and crosses through the center of the state, rose to 33.37 feet, the highest on record.
As a result, those rivers further downstream also overflowed their banks. The Greenbrier River reached over 25 feet above flood stage. Ronceverte was recorded as 23 feet above flood stage.
More than 25 people died in what meteorologists and historians are calling a thousand-year flood event.
The 6,000-member Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief Program, an outreach arm of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, recently assisted with flooding in West Virginia (Photos Provided)
Back in Kentucky, Coy Webb, Karen Smith and Jeff Free kept an eye on reports of severe weather that had already by-passed the Commonwealth. They didn’t have family members there. They weren’t worried about damage to their own personal property. They also weren’t the type who just take an interest in destruction.
Webb, Smith and Free are part of the 6,000-member Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief Program, an outreach arm of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. Webb has been the Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief Director for nine years and is one of two paid staff members.
Smith lives in Shepherdsville, but is a native of Whitesburg in Letcher County. She has volunteered with disaster relief for 23 years, serving as feeding coordinator for the last six years. When she is out on a response, Smith wears a blue hat and the other volunteers, wearing yellow hats, know if they ask Smith what to do, she will tell them.
Free calls Livermore, Kentucky near Owensboro home. He works at the Big Rivers Power Plant and currently volunteers with the disaster relief program by wielding a chainsaw and helping to clean up after floodwaters recede. As a state chainsaw leader, Free also trains others on proper chainsaw use.
The program works because ordinary people are called to serve others in extraordinary ways during the worst of times, in conditions which are frequently less than ideal.
An Eye To The Sky
Southern Baptists have been participating in disaster relief for nearly 50 years. They will convene with a roundtable to celebrate 50 years of service in January of 2017 in Texas, the site of the first disaster where Southern Baptists were called on to assist.
The Kentucky program is younger than that, but finds strength in numbers and in preparedness training.
Webb, a former pastor, says Kentucky has 45 mobile disaster relief units. The units are 20- to 40-foot trailers equipped in a variety of ways and offer showers, laundry, communications, child care, flood recovery and chainsaw.
“Four mobile feeding trailers can do up to 68,000 meals a day if all are deployed,” Webb says. “During Katrina, we were in that neighborhood.”
Fully equipped trailers would be nothing, however, without the volunteers.
“We require all volunteers to complete at least a one-day mandatory training and background checks. There is specialized training in damage assessment, emergency childcare, evangelism in crisis, flood recovery, mud out, ash out, safe food and water purification,” Webb says.
Chaplaincy and chainsaw are two categories that require more training, at least two days’ worth. Volunteers receive certificates for the training, a hat that matches their level of involvement and an identification badge. After three years, volunteers again undergo a background check and another round of training.
“Sometimes if you’re not prepared to go, not only physically but emotionally, you can add to the problem even though you mean well,” Webb says. “If people really want to help, they need to get connected to a reputable organization, get their training, and then go in a good way where they can have a significant and positive impact during times of disaster.”
Significant, positive impacts are what Smith and Free pray for. In answer to their prayers, they both have received what they call blessings.
“I do this because my savior gave his life for me. He hung on that cross before I was born. He loved me enough to do that,” Smith says, the tears filling her eyes and emotion pouring out with her words. “I love him so much that I would give my life for him, but he hasn’t asked that from me. He’s only asked me to go serve and love people.”
That service and desire to love others is why she had one eye trained on The Weather Channel back in June. As the waters in West Virginia rose, Coy Webb and Karen Smith talked about a potential Kentucky response. By Friday morning, Smith and her feeding team was put on standby, and at 4 a.m. on Saturday, June 25, Smith rolled out, headed east, toward what was left of Lewisburg in Greenbrier County. They stopped at the First Baptist Church, Fairlee, unloaded, and got to work.
That first day, they cooked in the church and the relief workers delivered meals. By the time Smith had assessed the situation, she immediately reported back to Kentucky and a food trailer was dispatched to the area.
Southern Baptists have been participating in disaster relief for nearly 50 years. They will convene with a roundtable to celebrate 50 years of service in January of 2017 in Texas, the site of the first disaster where Southern Baptists were called on to assist
“Typically, in a big response, someone is driving me and we are pulling a kitchen and I am on the phone or the computer the entire trip. By the time we get where we are going, the food we will cook is waiting on us or will get there in a couple of hours,” Smith explains.
In a disaster, the agency that calls for disaster relief purchases the food, the Kentucky Baptists cook it, and then the agency delivers it. Because the flooding in West Virginia was so widespread, the Red Cross bought the food, Smith and her team cooked, and both the Red Cross and the Salvation Army delivered it.
Every evening, Smith receives a call from the agency that contacted them. They tell her how many people she and her team will be feeding the next day and, because she is prepared, she knows exactly what to do.
During the first week in West Virginia, she was up at 5:30 every morning and went to bed around 2 a.m. During the second week, she was up at 5:30 and was able to find rest by 10 p.m. She and her team prepared meals that included chicken and dumplings, roast beef with mashed potatoes and green beans, soup beans and cornbread.
The team stays active between meal preparation as well.
“We went out into the community, listened to them, met with people, prayed with them, cried with them, laughed with them,” Smith says. “We don’t come in a little spot and stay right there. We go out and love on people. It is very important for them to be able to tell their story. They can’t tell a neighbor because they lost everything, too. They need ears that haven’t been there, just to listen and to love.”
The flooding isn’t necessarily the worst part of the disaster. That usually comes after the water recedes.
A Heart on The Ground
When Jeff Free was called out to respond during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005, what he saw still stays with him.
“For the first four blocks from the water, there was nothing but the concrete slab. Nothing for blocks and blocks. It’s absolutely devastating to people,” Free says.
Free has worked disasters with Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief since 1997 when he responded to a Louisville flood zone. Since then, he has worked several major southern hurricane responses, was called out to New York twice – once during 9/11 and once for Hurricane Sandy, responded to a forest fire in Colorado, and has even served overseas with disaster relief in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
After the floodwaters receded in June, the damage in portions of West Virginia was staggering. Huge, ancient trees blocked main streets of small towns. Over 60 roads had been washed away across the region. Cars and trucks and small homes had been tumbled along the path of destruction. Flood waters deposited mud, driftwood and debris inside homes and businesses. Unstable mountainsides dislodged and poured rock and mud into roadways and homes.
Like Coy and Smith, Free had his eye on the weather the last weekend of June. He received his call out on Saturday, made his decision to go, and by Sunday, June 26, had received approval for his vacation request from his supervisor at Big Rivers for that week.
Free worked mud out in West Virginia under another Kentucky team leader, Bill Kramer, of Henderson. They stayed at the North Charleston Baptist Church and worked during the day in a small town called Elk View, a 20 minute drive from the church.
The team’s work is a balance of wisdom, strength and compassion.
“If you can put yourself in that position and think of everything in your home that’s below four feet that is probably ruined, you can imagine the devastation they feel,” Free says. “We want that homeowner to know we feel for them. We do our work with a lot of compassion.”
The mud out team assesses each home and then discusses with the homeowners what they might be salvageable. They remove cabinets, drywall, paneling and sometimes the floors. The team then applies a disinfectant. As with the chainsaw team, Free says that if there is something they cannot do safely, they don’t take that chance.
In West Virginia, in a little over two weeks, 136 Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers served 37,206 meals, made 63 damage assessments, completed 72 flood recovery/mud out jobs, provided 185 showers and found time to show love to hundreds of flood victims.
Despite the statistics, it’s not the numbers that count to Webb, Smith and Free. It’s something greater, something that cannot be measured in normal increments.
“Disasters are great equalizers. Our main goal is we seek to bring help, healing and hope to people in times of disaster,” Webb says. “We hope our coming makes a significant impact on them that will enable them to recover in a better way and in a greater way from those times of loss in their life.”
