Tom Walden shows the flood level on one of the homes sitting on higher ground in Wanchese, NC. Flood levels in other homes were up to 7 feet. Photo - Bill Norton/NC Conference.
Hurricane Irene devastated the coastal areas of northeastern North Carolina. Inland waterways such as the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds and many of the rivers and streams running miles inland flooded with waters as high in some areas as 8 feet. Thousands of families were affected. The full scope of the need is still unknown. In the 3 weeks since Hurricane Irene hit, over 15,000 people have filed FEMA claims. Thousands of homes were flooded or damaged or destroyed by falling trees. The I-95 corridor and areas east were serious impacted with scores of communities suffering serious tree damage. Anecdotally, driving through the community of Pine Tops the day after the storm, we encountered trees down in almost every lot leading into and through the small town. Multiple houses had tree damage.
Another example, in the small fishing town of Wanchese, just south of Manteo, all but 5 or 6 homes suffered severe to catastrophic damage from storm surge flooding. Because of the track and slow speed of the hurricane, this story is repeated in almost every costal fishing village in the northeastern sound/inland water way areas.
As of September 20, the NC Conference has committed approximately $250,000 toward the response and recovery effort. We assume more funds are yet to be donated. In the response phase as we have sought to mitigate the initial effects of home flooding, we have provided over 8000 clean-up kits (5 gallon buckets containing bleach, brushes, 30 gallon bags, other cleaning supplies) across the coastal region. A call/operations center was established to coordinate and deploy volunteer work teams through the District Disaster Response coordinators of the affected districts. We have deployed 81 separate teams in the last 3 weeks, have 60 teams hard-scheduled in the next few weeks, and are in coordination with another 337 potential teams to be scheduled. Teams have come from inside the NC conference, but also from Tennessee, South Carolina, Western North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Virginia, and from other areas.
Several teams worked for several days through the I-95 corridor area in the Rocky Mount region and removed trees from dozens of homes.
Damaged items from flooded homes are discarded along the road ... a life-time of work gone in an instance.
In the Oriental area, because of the long-term where electricity was not available, the community had a significant shortage of food. The Goldsboro District provided over 8000 pounds of food in the last 2 weeks.
Case work training is currently ongoing with the goal to train volunteer case workers to do need assessment work.
For recovery, the North Carolina Conference is proposing a recovery effort working in 4 primary areas.
Oriental, Aurora, Swan Quarter, and Wanchese.
If you have such a team or would like to volunteer, please email disasterresponse@nccumc.org or call 888-440-9167.
For our NC districts and local churches, if you are willing to have your facility be used for work teams for this, or any, disaster, please fill out the Disaster Response Facilities Survey and send it to disasterresponse@nccumc.org .
Please also consider reaching out financially by giving to NC Storms Emergency Response – NC Advance #S-00176. 100% of every gift to this Advance will go to storm response. You can donate on-line at: NC Storms Response
You can also send funds to: NC Conference, P.O. Box 60053, Charlotte, NC 28260. Please be sure to note Advance #S-00176.