By Marv Knox
As the first anniversary of Hurricane Helene passes, her wake still reverberates with heartfelt gratitude and enormous need. The storm also has spawned plans for changing how the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship prepares for disasters.
Helene made landfall in the Big Bend of northwest Florida Sept. 26, 2024. As she drove inland, she delayed her most drastic destruction to the following day. Almost 500 miles away, in western North Carolina, she decimated Appalachian Mountain communities, a calamity that still defies imagination.
The storm claimed 250 or more lives, including at least 108 victims in North Carolina. She inflicted $78.7 billion in damage, including $53 billion in western North Carolina alone.
Residents in Helene’s path express deep appreciation for all the people who have helped them begin to recover — volunteers who showed up to work, as well as donors who contributed money and supplies for the effort. But they acknowledge restoration is far from complete; the region will need help for years to come.
Day of fury; year of pain
Helene was “a very different storm” than previous hurricanes that wreaked havoc in North Carolina, reported Dave Hawes, disaster response volunteer coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina and pastor of First Baptist Church in Bryson City, N.C.
A veteran of CBF response to hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018, Hawes said those storms generated flooding when rivers rose. “But Helene produced flash floods,” he explained. “Water came downhill and washed everything away.”
Cooperative Baptists took a two-pronged approach to disaster response in the region.
CBF Global worked with First Baptist Church in Asheville and Baptists on Mission, a response organization. Meanwhile, CBF of North Carolina partnered with churches in smaller towns across the rural region. Both approaches relied on teams of volunteers who journeyed to the disaster zone.
CBF Global-FBC Asheville-Baptists on Mission comprise a “one-of-a-kind, first collaboration between these three organizations,” noted Kristen Kirby, local coordinator at the church. But it reflects history: Since Hurricane Maria wracked Puerto Rico in 2017, FBC Asheville has sent nine teams to do recovery work alongside Primera Iglesia Bautista in Rio Piedras, where CBF’s Global Missions coordinator, Laura Ayala, was pastor at the time.
Because of their previous relationship, Ayala reached out to Kirby to check on conditions in Asheville. Based on those conversations, Kirby asked if FBC Asheville could collaborate with CBF “to bring more help into our community.” Casey Callahan, the church’s missions pastor, greenlighted the plan.
“Laura and I reached out to Baptists on Mission and put together this collaboration,” Kirby said. CBF provided financial resources to enable the church to host workers. And CBF vets the volunteer groups, the church provides lodging and meals and Baptists on Mission connects the volunteer teams to restoration projects — helping storm victims get back in their homes.
“When volunteers arrive, they’re greeted by a host here at our church,” Callahan said. “They have a place to stay, get hot meals and find daily projects waiting for them. Their assignments are based on the number of people in their group, as well as their expertise — or lack of expertise. Some projects are home repairs, and some are new builds. On any given week, these projects will be in a variety of stages of construction.”
Across the first year, FBC Asheville hosted 13 volunteer teams, which worked on 19 homes in Asheville and neighboring counties.
During that time span, CBF of North Carolina conducted multiple ministries to support victims of the hurricane’s destruction, said Wanda Kidd, CBF-NC Helene response coordinator.
“Sixteen CBF churches are in the region impacted,” Kidd said. Four of those congregations — First Baptist in Weaverville, Hominy Baptist in Buncombe County, Mars Hill Baptist in Mars Hill and First Baptist in Marion — made their facilities available for teams who arrived to help with reconstruction.
“We did not find the (rebuilding) locations ourselves; we partnered with organizations that already had people on the ground,” Kidd said. “But we tried to address the needs of the people left behind. … We asked how we could impact the infrastructure and the lives of the people who were impacted.”
On a practical level, Hawes, the CBF-NC disaster response coordinator, facilitated a CBF-NC initiative, which involved collecting and distributing more than 1,000 disaster response buckets in the storm zone. Each five-gallon bucket is filled with cleaning supplies and “just about anything you need to muck out a home,” he said. Hawes also moved a shower trailer, which got heavy use after Hurricane Matthew in 2016, from Lumberton to First Baptist Weaverville.
As the recovery time progressed, CBF-NC focused on a couple of other disaster responses.
“At Christmas, many people across CBF wanted to help the storm victims,” Kidd reported. “Churches in the area impacted by Helene wanted gift cards to distribute to families in their community. This would provide two positive impacts — flexibility for families to meet their own needs and generation of income into the local economies. So, we helped collect and distribute gift cards.”
This summer, CBF-NC pulled off a practical program to help hard-hit Helene victims. Through “Meals for the Mountains” — supported by CBF Global, churches and other donors — they fed 100 families per week during July. In addition to groceries, they also provided a set of clothes for each child in each family and gave all the families gift cards to help them get ready for school and to bridge the time until children could get meals at school.
Close to the point of Helene’s landfall, CBF of Florida and the Caribbean Islands created a partnership with Friendship Chapel Church of God to serve storm victims in Steinhatchee, Fla.
“This is an example of the connections we make in communities,” Tammy Snyder, CBF Florida’s coordinator, said. “This church is Pentecostal — not close to being CBF. But we partnered because we saw common need.”
In response to Helene’s damage, CBF Global Missions distributed close to a half-million dollars, Ayala reported. “The money we have received has been invested back in the communities, and the work has been done in response to needs identified by locals,” she added. “We take our cues from people right there, not at the national level.”
Support offered by Fellowship Baptists far and near has provided “an injection of hope for us, reminding us this Fellowship is bigger than we can see,” Callahan said. “The impact of Helene is something we see every day. The need for ongoing ministries — to alleviate homelessness, poverty and food insecurity — has only increased since Helene.
“So, for us, it’s been an inspiration of embodied encouragement to have small teams from across the country show up to help out.”
Only the beginning
While the anniversary of a calamity like Helene represents a painful milestone, it stands far closer to the beginning of the recovery journey than to the end, survivors said.
“The community has been forever changed, forever impacted. But recovery goes on for years — way past the public consciousness of the hurricane,” Kirby stressed. “This recovery will be a long-term journey, a marathon instead of a sprint. We need people to maintain us in their thoughts and prayers and contribute in whatever way they can.”
That includes traveling to Appalachia to help out.
“As our lives continue, there can be an overwhelming sense of fatigue, looking at the seemingly insurmountable recovery at hand,” Callahan said. “The damage done in a matter of hours will take years to build back. We still have thousands of homes to repair… But it’s not too late. People can come see the beauty of the mountains and help us clean up.”
And volunteers can choose from working in the Asheville area or in smaller towns across the region, Kidd added.
To learn more about volunteering in Asheville, contact Kirby at 2buildcommunity@gmail.com. To consider volunteering in nearby rural areas, contact Kidd at DR@cbfnc.org.
Getting ready for the future
The success of CBF’s response to Hurricane Helene, combined with an increasing need for preparedness across the Fellowship, has prompted Ayala to launch a new approach to the ministry — the Disaster-Ready Church Program.
“The need for the Disaster-Ready Church Program has never been more urgent,” she said. “The increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters pose significant threats to communities across the nation. As these events become more common, governmental resources are often stretched thin, leaving local communities in need of immediate support.”
“The primary objective of this program is to enhance preparedness and capabilities within congregations,” she said. Ultimately, it will lead churches through a discernment process, to assess their capacity and willingness to engage in disaster response. It also will equip CBFers to become “active contributors to disaster relief efforts.”
The new program fits into CBF’s historic disaster response context — but stretches it a bit, Ayala reported.
“We are not first responders. We don’t do search-and-rescue, and we don’t send medical teams into a crisis,” she acknowledged. “But as soon as these events happen, churches and leaders start calling, asking, ‘What can we do?’
“The worst response you can give is, ‘You have to wait.’ That’s not the answer the churches want or the people in the community need. They are hurting now.”
So, with the Disaster-Ready Church Program, CBF proposes to understand its place in the disaster response spectrum but speed up its ability to help.
“It’s important to know your niche — what you bring to disaster response,” Ayala stressed.
A key is making CBF’s ample resources — facilities and people — available, she said. For example, CBF churches can provide rooms where the Red Cross can interview disaster victims, safe parking for emergency vehicles and storage for supplies. Most churches have kitchens and people who know how to cook for crowds, as well as warm or cool spaces to protect people from the elements, and members to distribute food, hygiene kits and other necessities.
Hurricane Helene illustrates both the catastrophic need for rapid response and the positive impact — on both victims and congregations — of providing disaster relief, Ayala said. Hurricanes do not cover the breadth of the need, she added. Disasters also encompass fires, tornadoes, floods, blizzards, freezes and even human violence.
The program “empowers congregations to take initiative, fostering local leadership and collaboration that enhance community resilience,” she noted. “The grassroots approach ensures support is delivered swiftly and effectively, tailored to the unique needs of each community.”
Hawes, CBF-NC’s disaster response coordinator, participated in a learning lab at this year’s CBF General Assembly that presaged the new program. The Disaster-Ready Church Program embodies the Fellowship’s “Four R’s” of disaster response, he said. They are:
- Readiness — being prepared for whatever disaster might arise
- Relief response — going and doing, immediately after a disaster
- Recovery — rebuilding “after the cameras are gone and life is still there”
- Resiliency — putting systems in place to withstand future disasters
“Disaster response is a hub among a bunch of CBF hubs,” Hawes observed. “In disaster response, we can pull resources from so many things CBF does well — dealing with chaplaincy opportunities, racial equity, justice, rural poverty and more. They all have a place at the table when we talk about what disaster response should be.”
An illustration of site-sensitive preparation is taking place in LaBelle, Fla., near Immokalee. CBF Florida, CBF Global and the Cultivate Abundance feeding ministry are teaming up to renovate a building owned by Primera Iglesia Bautista, an SBC church, for a lodging facility and access to an enclosed pavilion with kitchen facilities, Snyder said.
“Because most hurricanes come through Florida and Immokalee is centrally located, this is a good location for volunteer lodging and a shower trailer,” she noted. “All volunteers will need is to bring a sleeping bag and a bar of soap, and they can dive into the work they came to do.”
Two goals will guide the Disaster-Ready Church Program in the coming months, Ayala reported. “We want to assist a minimum of 24 congregations — three churches in at least eight states and regions — to increase their capacity to respond locally and beyond,” she said. “And we plan to identify and train participants to become local, state and regional trainers, fostering a sustainable network of disaster-ready churches.”
Disaster-Ready Church Program training — combining both online and in-person learning — will start this fall, she said.
For more information about the program or to register to participate in training, contact your state or regional CBF coordinator or contact CBF global missions by emailing dr@cbf.net.