Baptists' Disaster Relief Truck Gears Up to Help Hurricane Evacuees
by Allie Martin
September 16, 2004
(AgapePress) - Churches throughout Mississippi are serving as shelters for coastal residents fleeing Hurricane Ivan as disaster relief workers and volunteers gear up to respond to the needs of those displaced by the massive storm that has swept in from the Gulf of Mexico.The Mississippi Baptist Disaster Relief Task Force is help on wheels -- literally -- bringing relief to victims in an 18-wheeler that is a fully contained mass feeding unit. The Task Force will soon be cooking up to 20,000 meals a day for victims of Hurricane Ivan.
Although more than 200 volunteers make up the Task Force workforce, Mississippi Baptist Record editor William Perkins says the work is hard and can at times be dangerous. "To work on these units, you can't just show up with a chainsaw and a spatula and a fork. You have to be trained," he says.
And members of the relief teams must be prepared to face discomfort as well as difficulty, Perkins notes, and they must be versatile and able to adapt to whatever conditions they encounter. "You have to understand what you're going into when you go into these disaster areas with no electricity and no means of support," he explains.
For example, the Southern Baptist editor says, "You have to be able to sleep on a gym floor at a church where the roof may be blown off. You have to be able to deal with large amounts of propane, fire, and commercial cooking gear, and the big electric generator that goes with the disaster relief unit."
Perkins says the Task Force has been busy lately, dispatching units to different areas in response to the recent spate of storms that have affected the southern United States. "The Mississippi Baptist Disaster Relief Unit was activated for Hurricane Charley," he notes, "and was posted in Arcadia, Florida, where they cooked over 100,000 meals for the folks who were victims of Hurricane Charley."
Since Ivan's landfall became imminent, some 24 Southern Baptist churches throughout Mississippi have opened their doors to evacuees and are now serving as temporary shelters for those affected by Ivan. Meanwhile, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers have returned to Florida to continue helping victims of Hurricane Frances in what has become the largest response in the relief network's history.
