June 16, 2025
PIKEVILLE, Ky. (KT) – It is an old expression, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Well, if that’s the case, then Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers are offering lots of godliness with their laundry and shower units.
KYDR veteran Glenn Hickey is overseeing those units, and a whole lot more, this week.
“I’m on everything duty today,” he said, while running errands in the area. “We will give you a shower, wash your clothes, clean out your house, and haul off garbage. We’re not washing cars,” he teased. “That’s where we draw the line.”
Truth be told, these KYDR servants would wash cars if it meant they got to share the gospel while shining up a fender.
Hickey is also organizing recovery units to clean homes from the flood water. Three teams from Kentucky and another from South Carolina are on the ground. More are expected to arrive later in the week. It is a cooperative effort that has become a trademark for Disaster Relief organizations – one state helping another one that is in need.
Dwain Carter, director of Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief, said the plan is for teams from the state to serve three weeks in Kentucky. Volunteers will be based in Fitzpatrick Baptist Church in Prestonburg and consist of feeding, cleanup and recovery, incident management, shower and laundry, and family care teams. Assessors and chaplains will also deploy.
Carter said disasters don't recognize state lines, and neither do relief efforts. "We had volunteers from 21 states, some who traveled great distances, help us when we needed it to respond to Hurricane Helene last year. Now it's time to show our brothers and sisters that same love."
The Cooperative Program provides much of the funding that allows Disaster Relief to serve in their respective states. CP is the heartbeat for the organization that has brought more than 70 volunteers to eastern Kentucky in the last few days.
The laundry service has only been active for a couple of days and residents have quickly found their way to them. They come with bags of filthy clothes from their mud-drenched homes while often covered in some of that same mud. Hickey said the area is a muddy mess. He has seen it before as a KYDR volunteer in Whitesburg during the 2022 flood recovery efforts.
“Floods are, in general, nasty,” he said. “Eastern Kentucky floods are just mud. Sometimes you have flooding where it’s not muddy because of say a tropical storm. In a flood situation up in Maine a year ago, the water was not dirty at all because it was snow runoff. But what we are dealing with here is mud, and a lot of it.”
On the first day the laundry was open, he said 60 loads of laundry were completed. People can bring loads of laundry and the KYDR team will wash, dry, and fold them. Some people are surprised to find they offer complete service for no cost.
“They’re a little surprised I guess that we’d go through all that for them,” Hickey said. "We’re happy to do it.”
The muddy water combined with the freezing cold has been a double whammy on the residents there, he said. “We had one person bring in a load and it was frozen. Everything is soaking wet, and the weather has been so cold.”
KYDR has 10 washing machines and 12 showers available. He said the showers have not been as busy yet. “This is just Tuesday, and the word is starting to get out,” Hickey said. “We will get a lot busier as the week goes on.”
He said anywhere from 6-10 volunteers will be working at a time in the laundry and shower units. Providing people with clean clothes is a blessing to the residents who have already been through so much. It also opens the door for those gospel conversations that the Disaster Relief teams crave having with people. “It’s our favorite thing to do,” Hickey said.
