Lost Bible Returned 21 Years After Hurricane Ivan Miracle
A Pennsylvania woman has been reunited with a pocket Bible that she lost in Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
A firefighter in Oakdale, Pa., found a small, faded Army-green change purse with a gold zipper in his jacket pocket. He shared his findings with the fire chief, saying, “I don’t know how this got into my gear, but it’s not mine.”
“We go through our pockets and our gear regularly to make sure we have everything, and he just came walking over and he said, ‘Hey, this doesn’t belong to me, I have no idea how it got in my coat,'” Fire Chief Jim Snatchko told CBS News.
The fire chief opened the purse, hoping to find something to identify its owner, according to CBN News. There turned out to be a small pocket Bible with an inscription inside. He took the Bible home, hoping that he and his wife would be able to locate the owner, and they were successful. After searching the internet, they found former Oakdale resident Amanda Cloutz, who described the Bible in detail to the couple over the phone.
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“To our shock, the last time Amanda saw this was in 2004 after she lost her home in the flood of Hurricane Ivan,” the fire department posted on Facebook. “It is undamaged, the inscription is in perfect condition, no rust on the zipper, no stains on the outside.”
The hurricane devastated the Pittsburgh area and most of Cloutz’s possessions more than 20 years ago.
“The fact they found it in good condition in somebody’s coat pocket, it’s a miracle,” she told CBS News. She believes the reason the Bible may have ended up in the firehouse is because her home was once located next to the firehouse.
“We (Amanda included) are at a total loss on how this could happen,” Snatchko said. “How did it survive in great condition after Ivan and so many other natural disasters that Oakdale has seen in the last 21 years? How did it end up in our building, which has been flooded so many times? And how did it end up in his coat pocket?”
–Alan Goforth
