April 26, 2024
SUMMERVILLE, Ga. – Residents of flood-ravaged northwest Georgia won’t have to worry about food or water in the aftermath of last weekend’s severe storms.
Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers have set up a mobile kitchen with the capacity to serve 3,000 meals a day and they're distributing truckloads of bottled water.
Director Dwain Carter said volunteers from Southern Baptist churches have set up mobile showers and mobile laundromats so residents as well as volunteers who have arrived to help with the cleanup can wash themselves and their clothing after long, hot days of shoveling mud and debris from homes and properties.
“This is what we do,” Carter said. “We exist to bring help, hope and healing to disaster victims. Our volunteers have been deployed to storm zones several times since last year, most recently to Kentucky where 38 people died in widespread flooding there."
The National Weather Service reported that 10 to 12 inches of rain fell in some locations of northwest Georgia over the weekend, much of it in a matter of hours on Sunday.
Georgia Baptists had dispatched trucks loaded with bottled water by Sunday afternoon after floodwater got into Summerville’s water system, forcing a water outage that could last a week or more while utility crews make repairs.
Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency in Chattooga and Floyd Counties, a necessary first step to deploying state resources to help the communities recover.
Carter said the Disaster Relief feeding unit has been set up at Dry Valley Baptist Church. Shower units are operating at First Baptist Church in Lyerly and at the city park in Trion. Washers and dryers also are set up at the Trion city park.
A recovery team has also been deployed to help residents with cleanup.
“For us, this is a labor of love,” Carter said. “This is how we live out the biblical mandate to love our neighbors.”
Disaster Relief is among the many outreaches funded by Georgia Baptist churches that give through the Cooperative Program, which has been described as the greatest evangelistic initiative of the modern church age.
By supporting the Cooperative Program, churches provide the financial backing to help the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board to spread the gospel throughout the state, across the nation, and around the world.
Carter said Georgia's Disaster Relief volunteers do far more than clean up property after natural disasters. He said they have led more than 50 people to faith in Christ since last year, and they're able to do that because churches provide the funding needed to put them on the frontlines.
