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In fact, last Sunday was the first time First Church’s pastor, Steve Mock, actually saw some of his members since the storm. Most of thom are still digging out from the brutal storm. Two weeks later, some are still without power. Still without water. Still without much access to the outside world.
By last weekend volunteer pastoral care teams coordinated by Peace River Presbytery had located more than half of Mock’s flock, the majority of whom reside in Punta Gorda Isles, the hardest hit section of Punta Gorda. On Monday the volunteers made their last pass through the subdivision, locating the last few people and gathering bits of information about where others might be — back north for the summer or temporarily living with friends.
Punta Gorda was so hard hit that First Church is virtually demolished.
“These (survivors) are exhausted,” says Linda Moore of Faith Presbyterian Church, in Cape Coral, FL, a few miles away from Punta Gorda.
Moore spent five hours one day, with a church directory in hand, trying to find the houses where members of First Church live. “They’re shocked,” she says. “You can see it on their faces. You see it in their eyes. You can hear it in their conversations because they have difficulty putting words together.”
It has been a long two weeks of rigorous recovery and repair work, much of it spent in 100+ degree temperatures with no respite from Florida’s heat and humidity — and few working air conditioners.
“For most of these folks, we were the first people who sought them out, other than neighbors on the street. We were the first people who came looking for them from the broader community, who just wanted to know, ‘Are you okay?’” says Moore. One man commented that he felt forgotten by the wider world — nobody had come to look for him in the post-hurricane chaos.
A hospital chaplain, the Rev. Helen Heffington, who is a parish associate at Faith Presbyterian, hurriedly trained volunteers, who were dispatched across Punta Gorda to find members of First Church. They carried packets of information about grief and recovery. And they were instructed to extend comfort, to assess safety, to pray and to listen to the stories told by survivors of the storm.
It was hard work.
Simply finding a house in the maze-like subdivision isn’t easy in the best of circumstances. But nowadays, at least in Punta Gorda Isles and its neighboring environs, the street signs are gone or bent. Some telephones still aren’t working. Trash is stacking up on the curbs — ruined furniture, torn roofing, pulverized horticulture and general debris — in some places clogging streets so that cars can barely pass.
Damage to homes can only be described as random. “Some sections are devastated. Roofs are off or partially off. Apartment complexes have their insides thrown around. It’s like a big monster just tore off a piece of the roof and tossed it around,” says Moore. But on the next street over the damage may be significantly less, such as just a few shingles missing.
Assessing damage has become almost an art form, Moore says. Moderate damage can mean anything from lost shingles to a partially collapsed roof or a couple of shattered windows or serious landscape damage — or all of the above.
“Even the houses that were pretty watertight are leaking,” Moore says, “Everybody’s house is leaking.”
One volunteer reported driving up to a house whose exterior looked fine. When he entered it, however, he found that the entire back wall was missing and the adult children of the couple who lived there were slapping together a temporary wall.
Other elderly folks didn’t have a way to the grocery or the pharmacy — a need the volunteers quickly took care of.
For Mock the news is better than he’d imagined. Most of his parishioners are OK. Those whose houses are unlivable have been temporarily relocated. Conditions aren’t great, but they aren’t as bad as they could be.
The session of First Church will meet soon for the first time since the storm ended to begin considering how to recover and rebuild. Mock has not been able to convene the session since the storm because he was simply not able to reach all the members.
For now, worship will be held in the nearby Burnt Store Presbyterian Church, also in Punta Gorda. It sustained only minimal damage.
Heffington says the presbytery is beginning to gear up for the second stage of pastoral caregiving in the disaster’s wake. That will include pastoral care for caregivers as well as tending to the spiritual needs of members. “We began tending to spiritual, pastoral needs right away,” she says, mentioning the volunteer visitors heading door to door to locate churchgoers.
After the shock wears off there will be a new batch of problems. “If you’re in a stressed marriage,” says Heffington, “it’s going to get much more stressed. If you’re out of a job, you may end up filing for bankruptcy. But the church will be the last entity to leave the table.” The church’s ongoing ministry will continue after emergency and humanitarian groups are gone.
“We’re gonna be here for the long haul” Heffington says.
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