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Presbyterian churches in South Louisiana Presbytery, destroyed six in Mississippi Presbytery and wreaked havoc in Tropical Florida Presbytery.
At first, Peacock, the associate pastor of Lakeview Presbyterian Church in New Orleans — and vice moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s 216th General Assembly (2004) — hoped she wouldn’t be away from home for long.
But those hopes were dashed Monday when she and her husband awoke in Memphis, TN, turned on a TV and learned that bowl-shaped New Orleans was rapidly filling up with water.
Two breaches in the city’s system of protective levees made its eastern reaches vulnerable to rushing floodwaters from Lake Pontchartrain.
Eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded. Some areas were under as much as 20 feet of water. Hundreds of thousands of people were rendered homeless, and officials say thousands may have been killed.
Realizing that returning home was no longer an option, Peacock and Kulakosky drove on to Urbana, IL, where they have been staying with Peacock’s parents since Tuesday.
“The amount of death and human loss is hard to begin to imagine,” Peacock told the Presbyterian News Service by phone from Urbana. “Peter and I feel very, very grateful, just to be alive and to be with family and to have a place to stay.”
After viewing aerial video coverage of the destruction, she said she’s pretty sure her Lakeview neighborhood, including her home and church, are under water. She doesn’t know how her parishioners fared, or where they are now.
“We’re assuming most of the people evacuated from our area, because they had access to vehicles — but we don’t know,” she said. “The hard part is not having information, and not being able to communicate.”
An estimated 36 Presbyterian churches in South Louisiana Presbytery, most of them in metro New Orleans or on the nearby North Shore, are believed to have been damaged.
That’s more than half of the presbytery’s 67 churches. Many are seriously damaged or completely destroyed.
But with communications down and parts of the city still unreachable, there is no way to be certain about the extent of damage.
“It is just a tragedy of Biblical proportions,” said the Rev. Michael B. ”Mike” Mann, interim general presbyter of South Louisiana Presbytery. “We know the churches that are in affected areas … but we haven’t heard from any of them yet as to how things are.”
Mann said he fears the worst for small Creedmoor Presbyterian Church in St. Bernard Parish.
“We’re being told basically that St. Bernard Parish no longer exists,” he said, “that it’s been reclaimed by the Gulf (of Mexico). I don’t know how much of that’s so yet. We just don’t have adequate information.”
Three members of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Team (PDAT) have been dispatched to the presbytery’s office in Baton Rouge to start organizing a coordinated recovery response and to manage disaster-related communications, according to the Rev. John Robinson, national associate for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA).
PDAT members support congregations and presbyteries in times of disaster. The team of about 40 volunteers from around the nation includes people skilled in pastoral care, organization and volunteer management. PDAT enables the church’s disaster-assistance agency to respond quickly and effectively in crisis situations.
Robinson expects the Gulf disaster to prompt the largest PDAT mobilization ever. He said 16 members already have been deployed “all along the storm” path, from Florida to Louisiana. He expects to use all 40 volunteers in what is certain to be an unprecedented, long-term response.
“We’re doing things and contemplating processes that we’ve never had to deal with before,” Robinson said. “We’re having to think in very large terms about preparing for work teams to come in, helping set up presbytery task forces for recovery. … We’ve never had to deal with numbers like this before.”
On Tuesday, PDA issued a $10 million appeal for Hurricane Katrina relief and earmarked $500,000 from the One Great Hour of Sharing offering and general relief funds for immediate responses to survivors’ needs.
Some of the money will be used to support the deployment of PDAT representatives in the affected presbyteries, congregations and communities.
Hurricane damage also was severe in hard-hit Mississippi Presbytery, where six Presbyterian churches were destroyed, according to Robinson, including Diamond Head Presbyterian Church in Diamond Head, MS, a small church about 15 miles west of Gulfport.
“We have five other churches that we have reports of destruction, but I can’t give you names,” Robinson told PNS on Thursday. “I don’t have that assessment in front of me.”
Historic Handsboro Presbyterian Church in Gulfport reportedly lost its steeple.
Ninety percent of the waterfront buildings in Biloxi and Gulfport have been destroyed. Biloxi felt the full force of Katrina, which destroyed extensive areas of the city and killed at least 185 people.
Biloxi’s mayor calls the hurricane “our tsunami.”
One Biloxi Presbyterian who weathered the storm was Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts, co-chair of the steering committee directing the PC(USA)’s $40 million Mission Initiative campaign.
News of her survival was broadcast Wednesday on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” program. Lucimarian’s daughter, Robin Roberts, is a news anchor on the program; she was reporting from Biloxi last week.
“I spent a lot of time with my family yesterday in Biloxi, and they told me to get out and get to work,” Roberts said on the air Wednesday. She is a Gulf Coast native who now worships at First Presbyterian Church in Hartford, CT.
Elsewhere, South Alabama Presbytery fared better than its Mississippi counterpart, suffering little damage, according to the Rev. Samford Turner, executive presbyter.
“There’s no damage to any of our churches,” Turner said. “There’s a few shingles missing on some of our coastal churches, but nothing to speak of, as far as damage.”
Turner acknowledged that some individual Presbyterians had personal property damaged or destroyed. He was waiting to meet with PDA representatives for further assessments.
“I don’t think in my lifetime there’s been a domestic disaster like this,” he said.
Turner and PDA have discussed the possibility of using South Alabama Presbytery as a staging area for relief efforts in Mississippi.
That might be a viable option, Robinson said.
“Because their infrastructure is so disrupted in Mississippi, in order to get jeeps in to help with clearing debris or doing any sort of cleanup, we’ll probably have to come through Alabama,” he said.
In Tropical Florida Presbytery, PDAT representatives were meeting with pastors to assess damage wrought last week as Katrina felled trees and dropped 14 inches of rain, causing extensive flooding.
Robinson said six Presbyterian churches were reported damaged. He said he couldn’t comment further until assessments were completed. The Rev. Arlene Gordon, executive of Tropical Florida Presbytery, could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, PDA has posted an online Disaster Response Registration Form for volunteers, and is referring work teams to the areas where they’re most needed. Abulletin insert also is available, at www.pcusa.org/pda.
Contributions for Hurricane Katrina relief may be sent through normal mission-giving channels. Designate gifts for any of these accounts: U.S. hurricane response, DR000169; pastoral care, DR000161; church damage, DR000163.
Contributions can be made by credit card by calling PresbyTel at (800) 872-3283, or going online to www.pcusa.org/pda/donate/accounts.htm.
Checks payable to the PC(USA) can be mailed to: Presbyterian Church (USA), Individual Remittance Processing, P.O. Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700.
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