WINFIELD, Missouri - We just ended our disaster relief efforts in Terre Haute, IN, where Operation Blessing coordinated more than 2,390 volunteer hours valued at $45,000. Terre Haute was a great success as we partnered with Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Rapid Response Team Chaplains and The Southern Baptist Disaster Relief.

The people we helped in Terre Haute were very poverty stricken and could not have otherwise “helped themselves.” We provided assistance to the elderly, single moms and disabled.

After wrapping up our flood relief efforts, we scouted Iowa and Missouri and visited three cities: Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Cedar Falls. Since there are a lot of agencies already providing relief in Iowa, we wanted to find an area that was “under-served” and not yet reached.

I connected with the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency, who were excited to hear from us and requested that we travel down the Mississippi River to be their eyes on the ground and check on specific small towns. I explained to them that we wanted to help a community that had not yet received help. They were very concerned about Winfield (Lincoln County), so we traveled there as requested.

We arrived on Friday, July 4th and their concerns were right on target. The first neighborhood we went to had standing water and homes were still flooded on 3 to 4 sides. We could not travel down some roads because the Mississippi River was literally flowing across it. I stopped to talk to two women in their sixties and asked how far away the Mississippi River “usually” is. They pointed to the back of the house still flooded with standing water and said, “The river is 3.5 miles that way!”

We met with the Lincoln County Emergency Manager (EM) also on Friday who has asked Operation Blessing, AmeriCorps and Service International to coordinate all of the volunteers and relief work for the entire community.

Lincoln County encompasses two cities - Winfield and Foley. Operation Blessing will be running volunteer teams/work crews in both cities. In Lincoln County there were approximately 40 homes flooded in Winfield, 60 in Foley and another 200 along the river. The 200 on the river are still inaccessible.

The community is very rural and poor. We will begin sending work crews out tomorrow and setting up infrastructure so that residents can apply for work (volunteers to help them clean their homes).

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 10:11 am and is filed under Disaster, Jody Herrington, North America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.