As waters recede, hope rises among flooded Georgia communities
By Adam Miller
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Disaster Relief volunteer Billy Entrekin from Woodmont
Baptist Church in Florence, Ala., carries Clorox for scrubbing moldy floorboard. Teams from nine state conventions, including the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, Texas Baptist Men, and the state conventions of Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, South
Carolina, Nebraska and Tennessee‹have mobilized to Georgia. Photo by Adam
Miller |
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Quintin Everett marks with his hand how high the flood
waters were on September 21, 2009. A group of Disaster Relief volunteers from Alabama helped Quintin and his mother clean out their home in west Atlanta. Photo by Adam Miller |
Atlanta, Ga. (BP) -- Flies gather on a teddy bear draped over the lip of a garbage can standing in a front yard. Last week, Dorothy Everett and son Quintin stood in this spot watching water rise from Prosper Creek, a trickle of a stream that swelled into their community near South Cobb Drive in west Atlanta.
A sulfur sewage smell still mingles with the musty mold dust floating from open windows as Quintin describes what happened.
“The water was as high as that shed there,” he said.
A friend hauls lumber and scrap metal nearby, as Quintin tests his drill and curls back a panel on a tin shed.
“There. That’ll let some air in.”
As floodwaters rose last week, within two hours Quintin and his mom were surrounded and had to be rescued by boat.
“But within an hour,” he says, “all the water had gone back down.”
The damage had been done. The Everetts’ wood flooring swelled with water and dry wall was drenched a foot up.
“I’m grateful,” said Quintin, gesturing to a man in a bright yellow shirt and walking in the house’s crawl space with a mold-killing spray can of Clorox. “These folks are great.”
Since morning, Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers from Alabama, Kentucky, Virginia and Georgia had been working to repair homes up and down the Everetts’ street.
The first four feet of trees and houses are covered in a tell-tale brown film from the waters’ rising, but hope is what’s rising this morning in parts of west Cobb, Douglas and Fulton counties as homes dry out and selfless acts redeem flood-stained streets.
More than 50 units of DR volunteers from nine state conventions -- including the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, Texas Baptist Men, and the state conventions of Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, Nebraska and Tennessee—have mobilized to Georgia.
Volunteers have spent 684 volunteer days preparing more than 8,600 meals, finishing 77 mud-out jobs and making 241 chaplaincy connections with homeowners. This, in turn, opened the door for 105 Gospel presentations and three professions of faith.
To assist Georgia's thousands of flood victims, a toll-free number, 800-460-6881, has been established by the North American Mission Board and the Georgia Baptist Convention to field calls from homeowners needing help to clean up their flooded, mud-filled homes.
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