Local church provides aid following Hurricane Helene

Tears well up in Steinhatchee resident Ken Pender’s eyes when he sees the yellow T-shirts worn by volunteers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrive in his neighborhood. 

When the volunteer teams pulls up, Pender is outside helping his neighbors in need, including 87-year-old Minnie Pope, who has lived in the area since 1972.

“I bought my house here 24 years ago, and I’ve lived here full-time for about seven years,” he said. “I stayed in my house, and thankfully, nothing broke during the storm. I had very little damage compared to a lot of my neighbors. Mrs. Pope here lives by herself. Her son and daughter come every day in the evening to check on her. She went and stayed with her son during the storm. She couldn’t even get to her yard when she came back to check on it because of all the debris. I immediately recognized the T-shirts, as this church helped clear my driveway only last year.”

As a small coastal community, Steinhatchee was especially hard hit by Hurricane Helene’s powerful winds and storm surge, which reached up to 20 feet in the area. Most homes were on the sides of the roadways or gone, boats were everywhere and lots of people needed help.

These factors in the community and the surrounding area spurred The Church to set up one of its four command centers in the state in Chiefland about an hour from Steinhatechee. 

Volunteers from the Orlando West Stake, located in Horizon West, made the trip out to the area to participate in disaster cleanup the weekend of Oct. 5 and 6. The volunteers plan to again provide assistance this weekend.

“When I see people like you guys, it makes me just tear up,” Pender said. “This is what does my heart good. I think there’s a lot of people that were on the edge of knowing Christ, and this storm probably pushed them to the other side of the fence. They can’t understand, and I don’t have any answers. I don’t know how to say that I don’t know why I have my home and you have nothing.”

‘THESE PEOPLE HAVE LOST EVERYTHING’

Following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, The Church immediately set up 12 command centers to help provide aid. 

Four hundred congregations pitched in to help, spanning from across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. About 6,172 volunteers signed up to help the first weekend, with 170 from the local West Stake. 

The Church partners with Crisis Cleanup, a collaborative disaster work order management platform, to take calls from those in need at command centers. The command centers document the calls, pinpoint the locations needing assistance on a map, take down information about the site in need and help to organize work orders.

Teams then are assigned an area to provide assistance. Based on the necessary tasks, team leaders visit the supply area at the command centers, which is equipped with items such as sweepers, chainsaws and shovels for tasks including tree and debris removal, roof tarping, and mucking out of houses. 

The teams pray before heading out to the sites, and they also offer words of prayer and a song to victims, regardless of their faith, following the completion of a work order.

Each of these two weekends, many church members will be camping out on Friday night so they can work as volunteers all day Saturday and most of Sunday. Others will drive down early on Saturdays.  

Following Hurricane Ian, more than 10,000 members from The Church volunteered to assist more than 30,000 victims.

The Church is anticipating the numbers will be much higher for Hurricane Helene.

West Stake communication leaders Tiffany Bratt and Corene Bingham both volunteered with their husbands and their children last year for Hurricane Ian disaster recovery. 

“We try to be disciples of Christ and show that we love our neighbor,” Bratt said. “We want to instill hope and show them that there are people who do care. We’re all children of God, and we all want to help each other. Service just really allows us to love other people.”

“For me, it’s rewarding to be able to be here to serve other people and to bring my family to serve,” Bingham said. “When we come in and we’re able to connect with the people and we’re able to see how it is blessing their lives, to me it strengthens my testimony. It gives me more of a desire to follow Jesus Christ and serve the way he served. It makes me feel compassion for others, but it also makes me feel so blessed. Everybody has trials in their lives, but I look at what we’ve been dealing with, and it’s nothing compared to this. I still have my home and my family, but these people have lost everything.”

‘I’M NOT OK, BUT EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE ALRIGHT’

Winter Garden and Horizon West residents traveled out to a variety of locations to provide assistance in Chiefland. 

One of the first morning stops Oct. 5 was the residence of Steinhatchee resident Betty Green. 

Green’s family has lived in the area for more than 100 years, with heavy ties to the community.

Green’s sister, Linda Bryant, was on the scene trying to determine if any items from the home were salvageable. 

The house underwent complete water damage and had to be gutted. Most items are beyond repair. 

“We had lost my mom two years ago, and my sister had lost her husband 11 years ago,” Bryant said. “She had just downsized to this house. Her daughter had just remodeled the house for her. She fixed it up exactly to her liking. She was so excited about this. She hasn’t even come back and seen it yet.”

Bryant said the storm devastated the whole town, but the community has been gracious in coming together to help those in greater need. 

“The infrastructure is going to be damaged for quite some time,” she said. “The human emotion behind everything has been overwhelming. I haven’t really stopped to think about what’s happened, because I can’t. I feel guilty that we still have a home to live in, because so many don’t. You wonder why one person is saved while the others are not, but you have to remember that God has a plan. You just have to keep moving. We’re just trying to maintain ourselves and be strong enough to get past this; you have highs and lows. We’re just fortunate to be alive, really, but we’re trying to figure out what life looks like moving forward. I’m not OK, but everything’s going to be alright.”

Summerlake resident Mark Peterson, who was on-scene at Green’s house, has volunteered with storm cleanup for the last seven years. 

“I’ve been blessed, and I’ve got so much in my life that it seems like nothing to give a little back and help people who have been hurt so badly,” he said. “I’m more than happy to help. Physically, yes, it’s a lot of work out in the hot sun for hours, but mentally it’s the most rewarding thing. It just makes you feel good.”

Ben LeStarge, who lives in the Waterside community of Winter Garden, said volunteering to provide assistance stems back to The Church’s beliefs.

“We’re Christians, and we believe in Jesus Christ,” he said. “That’s what He did, so we’re trying in our own small way to replicate that. Imagine that everything you own is damaged, and some items beyond repair.  We want these victims to know there’s people who care about them, and there’s a Savior (who) cares about us. We just want to provide some relief, peace and security. I hope we’re sympathetic and compassionate, and we realize that this can really happen to anyone.”