04372
August 20, 2004

Presbyterians begin picking up the pieces after Hurricane Charley

LOUISVILLE — While the Rev. Steve Mock is negotiating with demolition and salvage crews on what’s left of First Presbyterian Church in Punta Gorda, FL, teams of Peace River Presbytery volunteers — armed with church directories — are knocking on doors in a nearby subdivision looking for members of his congregation.

             Punta Gorda took a direct hit from Hurricane Charley, leveling homes, businesses and First Presbyterian Church.

             A week later, major chunks of the city still have no power. Telephone lines are down. Cell phone towers are collapsed. And Mock is just beginning to learn the whereabouts of many members his congregation as he sorts through the rubble of what used to be the sanctuary.

             Many of Mock’s parishioners live along canals in Punta Gorda Isles, which bore the brunt of the hurricane when it unexpectedly veered east off the Gulf of Mexico and swept inland via the Peace River, which runs straight through the heart of the presbytery.

             It was predicted to hit further north.

             “From what we’re gathering from (volunteers), the search went well. Reports are getting back that people are no okay. No serious injuries. Some homes are damaged severely. Some folks are still at home. Others are staying elsewhere,” he says, adding that his own house took a beating. It has been taxing doing mostly solo double-duty: cleaning up the house and negotiating the wreckage that is the church building.

             According to Mock, volunteers found about 50 percent of his flock Thursday. Friday’s push ought to track down who is left.

             While Mock’s parish fared worse than most, pastors in Peace River Presbytery are frustrated, a week after the storm.

              Many aren’t sure where or how their parishioners are, whether they were evacuated to safety, or, whether they’re digging out of a disaster, without electricity, water or phone service, according to the Rev. Graham Hart, the presbytery’s executive.

             He’s listened to story-after-exasperated-story and has a few of his own to tell, having spent the last seven days and nights tracing ministers who are themselves living without phone service or electricity ¾and trying to assess whether their homes are livable or not.

             So far, Hart says, six are known to have significant damage; one may be need to be demolished. But no Presbyterians have been reported among the dead.

             As best as he can figure, the presbytery has seven churches with various degrees of damage. First Church in Punta Gorda and First Church in Port Charlotte are the worst.

             According to Hart, crews are working to get the daycare center at the Port Charlotte church up and working, so that some normalcy can be restored to the lives of the children who go there. A routine is preferable to spending their days standing in lines in muggy temperatures waiting for ice, toilet paper and clean water.

             Presbytery crews are tarping the Port Charlotte church’s damaged roof and cleaning up the yard. They’re also searching for a crane capable of moving a huge pine tree off the roof.

             Burnt Store Presbyterian Church  also in Punta Gorda, fared somewhat better, although it was trapped inside the eye of the storm, like the other two. But there is major roof damage.

             The windows were blown out of First Presbyterian Church in Arcadia, Hart says, and the steeple is shot.

             A week after Charley blew through, Hart has gotten mixed reports about the Chapel-by-the-Sea near Fort Myers Beach. It sits on one of the barrier islands. High water has made it nearly impossible to get to the island. He’s heard that the sanctuary’s main window — of a dolphin — was blown out completely.

             Faith Presbyterian Church in Cape Coral has major roof and water damage. Vanderbilt Presbyterian in Naples also has roof damage.

             “I do know,” Hart says, “that many members have lost homes.”

             While several volunteers from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) quickly moved into Peace River Presbytery, Stan Hankins, who coordinates PDA’s U.S. disaster response, is in constant telephone contact from his Louisville office.

             He says that the damage done by Charley is reminiscent of another monster-storm, Hurricane Andrew, that crashed into the Florida coast in the early 1990s. Charley cut not as wide a swath of destruction, but it was every bit as strong.

             “It was like a 30-mile wide tornado — and we have much more church property damage than we did with Andrew,” says Hankins. “There were more churches in the path of this storm than ever before in my tenure.

             “We’ve got well over a dozen churches with pretty significant damage,” he says, adding that none of the affected presbyteries – Peace River, Tampa Bay, Coastal Carolina and Central Florida – are not yet ready to request funds.

             Assessment is going to take awhile.

             “This is a small metropolitan area, but there’s a lotta rural area here,” says the Rev. Larry Johnson, the PDA coordinator who was immediately dispatched to Peace River Presbytery. “It is going to be a little while before we find everybody.”

             His voice full of fatigue, Hall seconded that. He added that, once found, it is going to take an even longer time to rebuild people’s lives.

             “This was a massive storm,” he told the Presbyterian New Service. “Even though I knew the roof was down at the Punta Gorda Church, I still cried when I saw it. There’s one stained glass window left. It is Jesus as the Good Shepherd, standing there.

             “But it looks like someone took dynamite and imploded the building. It is all caved in.”

             Between negotiations with wrecking crews and instructions to volunteers on-hand to pull out what’s salvageable from First church, Mock is getting a service ready for Sunday worship. Last Sunday, he sat in the parking lot and greeted the few folks who made it to church: three couples and the church secretary.

             “They were pretty torn up about it. There’s a sense of rootedness here. Its an older building, 40-some years old,” he says, adding that its been terrible for him, too. “It was a beautiful sanctuary.

             “But most of us realize it was just a building. We’re thankful that no one was in it. That no one was killed.”

             Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has set up two accounts for Hurricane Charley Relief. Account #9-2000015 is for U.S. Disaster Response and #9-2000163 is for church property damage.

             Gifts may be sent to the Presbyterian Church (USA), Individual Remittance Processing, P.O. Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700. Donations can also be made by phone by calling PresbyTel at 800-872-3283, or via PDA’s secure web site: www.pcusa.org/pda.