Challenge Grows in Disaster Relief after Indiana Tornado; Faith Endures
After paving a 41-mile path of devastation, Sunday’s deadly tornado left hundreds of homes in rubble across Indiana and yet another region of disaster for relief workers to tend to.
After paving a 41-mile path of devastation, Sunday’s deadly tornado left hundreds of homes in rubble across Indiana and yet another region of disaster for relief workers to tend to.
"The challenge continues to grow," commented Jim Burton, director of Volunteer Mobilization of the North American Mission Board, to The Christian Post on Tuesday.
Southern Baptist relief workers are dispatched in the Gulf Coast, Florida, the New England states and now the Midwest region where some 350 people are left homeless, according to Burton.
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"We've been very fortunate that God has blessed us with the capacity to respond," he said.
Currently, nearly 50 NAMB volunteers are at the disaster scene in Newberg, Ind., with a feeding unit providing some 1,400 meals a day. The already-broken record of meals prepared for disaster relief is now reaching 13 million. Since day one, the relief team put up blue tarps on roofs, cleaned debris, trimmed trees with chain saws and tried to close up homes to protect families from the weather, according to Allen Haynes, director of Indiana Southern Baptist Disaster Relief.
Haynes has been on a nearly two-hour daily commute to and from his home to assist in the affected areas since the tornado struck.
"We just came back from seven weeks of work in Mississippi," said Haynes to The Christian Post. "Our guys get pretty tired. They're dealing with the emotion of the people they're helping and of seeing the devastation and we try to make sure that they don't work more than a week at a time."
Since Katrina made landfall two months ago, different teams have been deployed across the damaged regions where nothing but demolished land and homes were seen for miles.
"You drive for so many miles and you don't see anything that's not damaged," said Haynes.
Over 30,000 volunteers have been utilized in the south, according to Haynes, including over 100 feeding units and 400 recovery units. In Indiana alone, 300 people had been dispatched for immediate relief aid.
USA Today reported the tornado's strength and it having struck in the middle of the night in November as all unusual, according to Dan McCarthy, warning coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. The storm killed 22 people with winds that exceeded 200 mph.
A tornado watch was also issued Tuesday evening in the northern counties of Indiana as thunderstorms were possible into early Wednesday.
Spreading widely across the states in relief and recovery efforts, the unprecedented Southern Baptist response has been "enlarging the vision of our people," said Burton. "We will continue to grow to respond to these disasters even better in the future."
With a high number of disasters in the last couple of months, it has not always been easy for relief workers to face the devastation each day.
"It's difficult for any of us to get in the center of it," said Haynes. For 16 years, Haynes has faithfully served in the disaster relief field after promising the Lord he would help others if the Lord just spared his home in the midst of all the disasters.
"Of course we're a faith-based operation ... if it wasn't for our faith, we wouldn't be able to do it," he commented. "It's Christ that lives within us that makes it possible."
