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NASHVILLE, Tenn.?More than 100 Southern Baptist disaster relief units are being dispatched to Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike’s widespread destruction in the Galveston and Houston areas.
“We are looking at damage assessment reports coming from the state and counties to find viable areas where we can set up,” said Mickey Caison, director of Southern Baptist disaster relief (SBDR) operations in Alpharetta, Ga.
SBDR is working with American Red Cross officials to establish two “mega” feeding sites near Houston — one in League and the other in Baytown. Both sites will include four SBDR feeding units and will prepare up to 80,000 hot meals a day, according to an SBDR news release Sept. 14.
Caison said Southern Baptist feeding teams are committed initially to preparing 250,000 meals a day for the Red Cross and another 160,000 meals a day for the Salvation Army — for a total commitment of 410,000 meals per day.
Baptists already are preparing hot meals in three Texas locations — Marshall, Bryan and the Air Force’s Kelly Field Annex facility in San Antonio.
Ike’s destructive path, however, was not limited to the Texas Gulf Coast.
Across Louisiana, on either side of Interstate 10 and south to the Gulf, 100,000 homes were flooded in the wake of Ike’s storm surge, reported Gibbie McMillan, disaster relief team leader for the Louisiana Baptist Convention.
“It’s worse than [2005’s Hurricane] Rita,” McMillan said, echoing a common assessment voiced by government officials, law enforcement officers and homeowners in the state.
“People don’t realize how big this thing is,” McMillan said. “At one point, the Weather Channel was reporting Ike covered 85 percent of the Gulf.”
After landfall as a Category 2 storm with 110 mph winds early Saturday morning, Ike moved toward the northeast still on its wind-and-rain rampage, killing more than 30 people in eight states and leaving missions without power from Texas to Ohio.
McMillan added, “It’s at times like these we realize how important it is to be in the Southern Baptist family,” knowing that disaster relief ministry in Louisiana and, now, Texas and elsewhere will be provided to people in need.
Caison had reported Sept. 13, “Our goal is for all disaster relief units to arrive at the local affected sites by Monday afternoon, set up and then be ready to start preparing and serving meals by Tuesday at lunch.”
Disaster relief units from 23 states activated, en route, staging or on-site in Texas are Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and Texas Baptist Men; Oklahoma; Virginia (Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia and the Virginia Baptist Mission Board); California; Florida; North Carolina; South Carolina; Arkansas; Alabama; Georgia; Michigan; Tennessee; Illinois; Arizona; Iowa; Kentucky; Mississippi; New Mexico; Pacific Northwest; Utah/Idaho; as well as one from Louisiana.
Among other reports, Houston Baptist University reported that classes were cancelled until Wednesday, Sept. 16, at the earliest. The HBU website did not note the extent of damage at the campus. “Our prayers are with all those affected by this storm,” the site said. The Austin American-Statesman reported that a handful of campus police officers and student life personnel along with about 60 students were in theater of the university’s new cultural arts center as Ike pummeled Houston. Meanwhile, no reports were available yet from the Houston campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Louisville, Ky., was among the cities with widespread power outages in Hurricane Ike’s northward sweep. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary there was closed Monday, Sept. 15.
If you would like to contribute to the disaster relief ministry through the SBTC, click here
