First Baptist Church in Hendersonville, N.C., has found itself at ground zero in the wake of devastating Hurricane Helene. “I was hearing story after story; people are broken,” the church’s Kristi Brown says. “It was incredible what I heard today.”
The monster storm has killed more than 200 and hundreds remain missing. According to NBC News, hope is fading of finding additional survivors. Videos of flooding showed buildings completely covered and in one scene, a building floats down a street narrowly missing those sheltering on an upper floor of an apartment complex.
As of Thursday, over 350,000 people remain without power in South Carolina alone. In Georgia, around 260,000 have no power, according to PowerOutage.us.
Survivors are gravitating towards churches and private organizations as FEMA says they do not have enough funds to adequately respond.
According to a video that Senior Pastor Justin Alexander posted on Facebook, about 5,000 people in the town of approximately 15,000 drove through the church’s parking lot, which is 25 miles south of Asheville. Brown was among about 100 volunteers and staff at the church dispensing food, water and basic hygiene products to residents earlier this week. Volunteers also ministered to their spiritual needs, and she said she offered to pray with suffering local residents and singled out several harrowing stories that “blew her away.”
READ: Billy Graham relief effort on the ground in North Carolina and other states
One woman whose house and shed were crushed by fallen trees told Brown she has had no contact with one family member since last Friday when the storm hit, leaving the area without power, internet service or gas for days. Dead bodies reportedly have been found in trees, and more than 1,000 people remain unaccounted for.
“I found when I would ask people to pray about stuff, they would tell me some things to pray about: their home, a missing loved one, whatever the need,” Brown told the Christian Post. “But they all were saying, ‘I just don’t know what to do with this.'”
Even if their house was spared, Brown said many are straining beneath the trauma of witnessing the shocking scale of devastation in their community. “People right now just need people to care and love them, and let them know it’s going to be OK,” she said. “But I share all that to share the brokenness that’s going on right now.”
Brown, who said she is struggling herself, urged Christians to pray urgently for the restoration of the region’s critical infrastructure and for the mental well-being of residents who will need patience as they come to realize “this is going to take years, not weeks, to recover from.”
“People right now don’t even know where to turn for the basics,” she said. “We probably need mental health professionals in here, because everyone’s going to probably have some PTSD from this. People are hurting, but they need to know people care. It’s not that I doubt God or his sovereignty; it’s just I’m struggling with so much loss and destruction.”
“I’m trying to find the blessings in this storm. This storm is bringing our community together in a way that I’ve not seen in a long time. I think nationwide, our community has been divided in this whole political season that we’re in. But now people are helping people. So a blessing is, I think, the unity that’s formed because we’re all in crisis together.”
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice