But throughout all of these disasters, she relied on her faith to keep her going.

“For some reason I just trust that God had us,” she said.  “…I knew God had us.”

And then Hurricane Florence struck in September 2018. 

The storm destroyed her home and forced her to bounce to different shelters for months afterward. But eventually, women from the town of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, helped her buy a new house.

“They were angels that God placed in my life,” Geathers said.

When recovering from a natural disaster, many Americans, like Geathers, look to religion and faith to cope with the physical and emotional aftermath and integrate faith into their recovery process.

More than 75% of Americans affiliate themselves with a religion, and a majority of Americans consider religion to be “very important” to their lives, according to Pew Research Center. 

Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute in Wheaton, Illinois, has studied how faith affects both the short-term and long-term resiliency of communities.

“I’ve noticed that a lot of people turned to faith for meaning and as a way of understanding what they’re going through when disaster strikes,” Aten said.

In an open-ended survey asking Americans where they find meaning in life, 20% mentioned religion or spirituality in their answer, according to Pew Research Center. 

In fact, when Aten and his team surveyed survivors about where they turned to post-disaster for support, local religious groups ranked within the top five in both rural and urban communities.

“That’s a pretty important statistic to be aware of,” he said.

Research has shown that religion can be a coping mechanism and can assist people in adapting their lives after a highly stressful life event. 

While natural disasters can provoke intense stress and a feeling of helplessness, 

religion can provide an explanation for why they occur and how to move forward, said Katie Cherry, a psychology professor at Louisiana State University.

Research widely supports that survivors can experience post-traumatic stress following a natural disaster, Cherry said.

“Then the question becomes, ‘Well, does religiosity help it, or does it make it worse?’” Cherry said.

Aten said the greatest predictor of individual resiliency after a natural disaster is not how religious a person is but instead how a person utilizes his or her faith to manage the stress.

Even after significant losses, people who believe that God still loves them and will be there through that difficult time may struggle less psychologically than others who view God as punishing or judging them, Aten said. 

Even when enduring the same disaster, survivors can have different religious responses.

Hurricane Maria caused massive damage in both the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in 2017.

Claudius Prosper, a resident of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, said he trusted in God even as all of his material possessions were damaged. 

“Even though everything was gone in the home, that would not be a problem for me because…since I have life, God would provide,” he said. “So that was it.”

Calila Figueroa, a 14-year-old resident of Loiza, Puerto Rico, struggled at first to come to terms with the hurricane’s destruction.

“Why would God let this happen to us?” Figueroa said. “This isn’t something anyone deserves. And I was angry and I was sad. But then I thought it’s just a natural disaster. And eventually we’re gonna get over it.”

Not only does one’s individual faith impact recovery but also faith communities play an essential role in getting people back on their feet.

Cherry found in her research that people who express and practice religion by themselves — and specifically without a community — were nine times more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder than others.

“When you still have that as a coping resource, people do tend to do better and that that may just be another manifestation of the positive effects of social support,” she said.

But if expectations for their communities and religious leaders go  unmet, it might push them through more grief.

“When you hold that really dear – when that institution does not come through for you on your worst day, it creates a disappointment that’s painful and horrible,” she said.

Pastor Jeffrey Brown, Jr. from Calvary Missionary Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio, said after a tornado battered his community, he adjusted the worship service to focus on gratitude for surviving the storm.

“I told my congregation on Sunday (that) sometimes it takes a storm to pick us back up and let us know that, ‘Hey, we need actually need each other,’” Brown said.

Some churches are hit by disasters themselves.

When Superstorm Sandy overwhelmed Grace Bible Church along Oakwood Beach in Staten Island, New York, Rev. Richard DuPont said only three items survived: the DVD projector, the pulpit and the framed Bible verse, John 3:16.

This prevented the church from holding services for two weeks until DuPont offered up his house to the congregation.

Now, the church stands alone among empty lots after a majority homeowners took advantage of government buyouts. Grace Bible Church remained because the buyout deal did not offer them enough money. 

“I offered them the building if they would buy a piece of land, build a building equivalent to this and have movers move everything over for us,” DuPont said. “We haven’t heard from them again.”

As Geathers aims to build her new home in Mount Pleasant higher off the ground, she said she hopes she won’t have to ask for help from FEMA again, so other survivors can get the funds they need. 

“I trust and believe that God will work it out,” she said. “I’m doing what I can do, and what I can do right now is say it takes one day at a time and build one day at a time and do what I can do one day at a time.”

News21 reporters Allie Barton, Molly Duerig, Stacy Fernandez, Sophie Grosserode, Carly Henry, Harrison Mantas, Priscilla Malavet, Ellen O’Brien, Miguel Octavio, McKenzie Pavacich, Ariel Salk, Ben Sessoms, Natalie Wadas and Isaac Windes contributed to the report.

Justine Coleman

Justine Coleman is a recent graduate of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, with a major in journalism and mass communication and minors in psychology and religion. Coleman interned two semesters at NBC’s “Meet the Press.” She also worked at the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, assisting with The Washington Post’s coverage on unsolved murders, and on the Maryland and Virginia primaries. Coleman contributed to a front-page story for The Post on the deportation of the last living Nazi defendant in the U.S. She was assistant news editor at The Hatchet, GW’s independent student newspaper. Find more of her work here.

justinecoleman.weebly.com

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The website, MySonomaStrong, lets users self-assess their potential traumas and connect to resources anonymously.  

Some natural disaster survivors will not go to traditional treatment centers because they don’t want to deal with the feelings associated with the trauma, or survivors are in a place without mental health services, said Josef Ruzek of the National Center for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. 

Online tools can reach a large population in a variety of languages for low cost, Ruzek said. 

Ruzek helped develop MySonomaStrong and an app, Sonoma Rising, for the wildfire survivors. He said the programs can be used not just to help people acknowledge and track individual progress, but also could be integrated into traditional therapy. 

The website and app let users self-assess their potential traumas and connect to resources anonymously. 

Todd Player of MySonomaStrong said the website can “meet people where they are.” 

Susan Dunn uses MySonomaStrong to track her progress and monitor how she is feeling after a fire destroyed parts of her neighborhood. 

Certain sights, sounds and smells can act as a trigger for Dunn. 

“Oh, I smelled smoke. Now it’s happening again for me,” Dunn said.

Although she did not lose her house, she said her entire community was traumatized, with symptoms that won’t go away. 

“There’s been lots of trauma in that neighborhood, during the fires, and you just don’t take anything for granted after an experience like this,” Dunn said.

Player said the response grew after the second year because of 2018 wildfires in neighboring counties, and says that over 3,000 people now use the website.

“To some who look at web sites like Google or Facebook which get millions of visits per day that doesn’t seem like a lot, but I like to remind people this is mental health counseling not social media or an e-commerce site,” Player said. “If I took any provider and lined up even 100 people outside their door who wanted to talk about services or wanted actual therapy, they would feel inundated and that would be a huge number. So I look at that and say it’s really quite successful at reaching people who need help.”

He said driving through the county is still surreal. 

There might be three or four houses clumped together, with nothing left except the fireplace and the foundation, Player said. “You can drive another 250 feet, and they’ll be houses that are completely unscathed.”

Ruzek said there is a growing interest and need for mental health-related to natural disasters, but involving the internet is a very new development. He sees a future where survivors can use their phones to help learn coping skills, connect to other survivors and check their trauma. 

Surrounding counties and California government are asking the Healthcare Foundation Northern Sonoma County to replicate the website and app for their communities, said the foundation’s CEO Debbie Mason.

She said this September, the foundation will start advertising more heavily for the anniversary of the fire. 

“We constantly need to be in front of people so that when they decide they’re ready for help, they know where they can get the free tools to get help,” Mason said. 

Mental health professionals in Sonoma are especially worried about its residents because of economic stress after the fires, said Mason.

The average daily rate in April 2019 is down a little over 4% compared to the same time last year.

When the fires hit Sonoma, 2017 was the first year the county didn’t experience any population growth since 1860. Over 3,300 people moved from Sonoma County in 2018, according to World Population Review.

Mason said people are still leaving.

“Everybody is feeling it,” said Mason, adding that even mental health professionals are overwhelmed with the need in Sonoma. “Everybody feels exhausted. We’ve got a community that’s really, really hurting right now.”

Sarah Beth Guevara

Sarah Beth Guevara is a senior at the University of Oklahoma where she is finishing a degree in journalism and a minor in vocal music. She currently serves as president of  the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at OU. She is also a Gaylord Ambassador. The bilingual journalist has interned with the Enid News and Eagle and News 9. She’s also written for OU Nightly, Gaylord News Oklahoma, Monkey Cage….and [UNFILTERED], a student media project with KWTV News 9. In the fall she will be a wire reporter for Gaylord News in Washington, D.C.

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While the lodge has long been lost to humans, it now is home to a large colony of feral and stray cats.

When Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas in 2018, Kim Williams’ animal welfare nonprofit, Lucky Cats of Kinston, helped the motel cats weather the storm. 

Most people are able to flee in a natural disaster, but feral and stray cats — which often group together in a colony — are often forced to fend for themselves. 

But more help has come their way in recent years.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Congress mandated that states and the federal government take animals into consideration when developing their emergency management plans. 

These days, before and after storms, local animal welfare groups around the country spring into action to help homeless animals before and after major storms.   

Groups like Lucky Cats in Kinston, Camp Many Paws in Naples, Florida, and Maryland-based Alley Cat Allies supported existing feral colonies before Hurricanes Florence, Irma and Harvey, respectively, by rebuilding feeding stations and shelters. 

About the Kinston motel cats, Williams said: “That is their home, and they’re equally a part of our environment as raccoons and squirrels and possums.”

Williams started the nonprofit in August 2018, a month before Hurricane Florence, as part of a collaboration with the neighboring Lake Norman Lucky Cat Program. In the run-up to the hurricane, Williams and her husband, Kendal, scrambled to set up shelter for the cats to ride out the storm.

“We got palettes and we got totes, and we got bungee cords, and got tarps, and we did some makeshift houses and feed stations on the highest ground that we could possibly find,” Williams said. 

Before Florence, Williams and her husband set up a feeding station on the motel’s second floor. 

“I often joke that they pretty much have it made there because well, they have rooms, and they have a river view, and the food is brought to them,” Williams said.

Lucky Cats of Kinston wasn’t the only group in the eastern North Carolina protecting animals during the hurricane, which flooded the area.

The Lenoir County SPCA, or Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was able to evacuate dogs and cats from its building ahead of Florence. A shelter in nearby Newport, North Carolina,  wasn’t so lucky, and its first floor flooded and roof collapsed before animals were rescued by the Cajun Navy, a volunteer group that does water rescues after storms. 

Since the storm, Williams said she and a group of volunteers have worked diligently to spay and neuter more of the motel cats, as well as put out food and water for them everyday. 

“I could not be happier with the group of people that have stepped up,” Williams said, adding, “I’ve really had my faith in humanity restored because of them.”

The motel and its cats is one of five colonies Lucky Cats manages around Kinston, and in 10 months of operation they’ve spayed or neutered 353 cats, 194 of which were female.

In anticipation of the 2019 hurricane season, she made plans to fortify her feeding stations, and will clear them out if necessary. 

The goal for Williams is to manage her colonies for long enough that the only storm preparation she’ll need is for herself.

Maryland-based Alley Cat Allies offers tips to groups that care for feral and stray cat to help them prepare for disasters.

Harrison Mantas

Harrison Mantas is working on a master’s degree at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.  He received a bachelor’s degree in film and television production from the University of Southern California, and worked in entertainment and in the nonprofit world. At Cronkite, he has covered stories on the debate over light rail in South Phoenix, Native American adoptions and grazing fees on Arizona State Trust Land. Examples of his work can be found here.

harrisonmantas.com

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But ask Preuss what his favorite animal in his pet shop is, and his answer might surprise you.

“My favorite animal are humans,” Preuss said. “Honestly, if you can’t figure out how to love and care and be compassionate toward humans, you don’t really have a chance with animals.”

Preuss gets to express that love and care every day in his one-of-a-kind animal emporium, with all 25,000 square feet being used in one way or another. Preuss Pets has a quarantine room for animals that arrive there, a breeding room for both fish and birds, a classroom for demonstrations, a school bus and a massive showroom with a mixture of just about everything — birds, reptiles, and hundreds of fish tanks.

On the night of Dec. 22, 2013, an ice storm hammered Michigan’s capital city. The storm’s more than six inches of ice not only knocked out power for more than a week for a significant chunk of the Lansing community, but it also turned Preuss Pets into a shelter.

For Steve Oberg, aquatics manager at Preuss Pets, his family didn’t get power back for nearly two weeks, giving his kids a Christmas unlike any other.

“I distinctly remember the kids opening up Christmas presents at home, under flashlight, at like 5 in the morning,” Oberg said.

But thanks to what Preuss called, “the grace of God,” Preuss Pets was one of the few places in town that didn’t lose power from “the storm of all storms.”

“It was hard for anybody to be prepared enough for that,” Preuss said. “We could have been not helping others but doing everything just to help ourselves at that time, if it hadn’t been for just a bit of luck or coincidence.”

Part of the luck for Preuss was the timing of the storm. Pet shops that sell fish typically don’t get new fish around the Christmas holiday, meaning the dozens of fish tanks in the shop’s quarantine room were empty. When you add the used fish tanks they sell, Preuss Pets had at least 50 fish tanks available and ready to be used.

And that was a good thing, because every one of them was needed. Fish are particularly impacted by power outages, as most aquariums need power to maintain proper water temperature, oxygen levels and filter systems. But the confluence of timing left Preuss Pets prepared to fill every tank with fish seeking refuge.

“We set up all these extra tanks to put people’s fish in, and we age water and filters. Doing some of these things that would [be] very difficult without that,” Oberg said. “It was fairly easy for us to set up that sort of temporary hospital, but it wouldn’t normally be very easy to do.”

Some of the fish that dozens of people brought to Preuss Pets actually stayed for more than a month, allowing owners to make sure their lives were back in order before coming back for their fish. But a constant cycle of fish coming in and out of the store fit right in with the way the store operates daily.

“We run this store every day with a sense of chaos, because there is so much that happens,” Preuss said. “It was mainly trying to plug those animals into that routine.”

While some people would struggle deciding if they would welcome strangers into their home — or, in this case, strange fish into his store — Preuss said it wasn’t a decision at all.

“It’s a reflex … I mean, what is my option? I don’t even see an option. How could you say, ‘No, we can’t?’” Preuss said. “You’ve got to open the doors. In those situations, we always got to pull together.”

Preuss grew up in pet shops thanks to his mother’s fascination with them, helping her run various shops since he was 9. From those experiences, he admits that there is an element of a “bubble” to the pet shop world — where everyone can get along and “geek out” over the animals. But in his eyes, there’s no other way he’d rather be.

“What we’ve created in this store, we’re allowed to feel naturally that these are really cool things,” Preuss said. “We can create these things for people and the people kind of rally around us, and we create this collective energy and everybody’s loving it.

“It’s hard to get outside of that bubble and be in the midst of a cold world. It’s just not natural to us. So yeah, maybe there is a certain degree of optimism and faith and hope that this is just the way it is, and when you go outside that bubble, you realize that it’s not. But it can be.”

And the Lansing community has embraced that, too. Preuss speaks at nearby Michigan State University classes every year, and is even featured as the Waldo in a Lansing-specific “Where’s Waldo?” map. The environment they’ve created at Preuss Pets allows for people to feel like it’s a place they can call home.

“There’s people that will come in that need us,” Preuss said. “Some show up every day, some show up every week, some show up every month, but we’re part of that routine. And you can see that it means something to them.”

But that chaotic routine also means something for the people at the Preuss Pets, too, especially when the community needed it most.

For aquatics manager Oberg, what they were able to do for Lansing not only had a major impact in the reaction to the 2013 ice storm, but has also left a lasting legacy at the pet shop.

“That event not only showed us what we can do for the community, but it also showed us what we needed to have for a facility here to protect our investments, our resources and the fish that we’re responsible for,” Oberg said.

And for Preuss, the moment that still sticks with him more than five years later is the chance to see the impact that saving a fish had on a young girl and her family, and see the purity of why humans are his favorite animals.

“We saved their piranha, and this little 5-year-old was practically weeping in tears and jumping for joy and excited that their piranha was still alive,” Preuss said. “And it’s like, ‘Wow.’ You don’t know how you touch people in that way. Seeing different people and how they were able to reunite with those animals? That’s what made it all worthwhile.”

Alex Simon

Alex Simon is a master’s student at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, Simon attended Elon University in North Carolina and received a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. During his time there, he was the sports editor of the Elon News Network, the student news publication on campus. Simon has also worked as a writer for MLB.com, Baseball America, High Post Hoops and the Burlington (N.C.) Times-News. View his work here.

 

alexsimonsports.com

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 The town of 3,000 residences reported structural damage, and 90% of the wood buildings and their zinc roofs were blown away as a result of the September 2017 hurricane, officials said. 

But the damage done by Maria didn’t stop Serrano from working for the community —  her nonprofit center overnight became one of the first responders to the people of Loíza. It transformed itself from a learning center, with a Montessori school,  to a refuge and place of all kinds of help for residents, both there and in the community.

“We started to do visits to the community, to our own Montessori participants, our own kids. We saw that they lost their houses and a lot of them were now in shelters,” said Serrano. “We became a recovery center of clothes and food to distribute it to the community.”

The staff of Centro Esperanza worked around the clock for more than a week after the hurricane, Serrano said. They offered emotional management workshops in nearby shelters  with their program Vida y Esperanza (Life and Hope). And they distributed solar lights to children, groceries to bedridden elders and lunch to the neighboring communities.

In the first weeks after the storm, the center and its employees helped hundreds of people, Serrano said, even though their own building suffered some structural damage.

“We were the ones who went to them, since no one had gone to help them,” said Serrano. “We looked for the kids and the kids would come.”

After the hurricane, the center  also served as a care center for the many children that were living in shelters during the emergency, Serrano said. Cared for by teachers and staff members, children enjoyed music therapies, received psychological counseling and meals in an environment far away from despair. The space offered relief to both children and their parents.

For Deborah Delgado, Centro Esperanza has been a wonderful experience for both herself, as a teacher in the center, and her then 5-year-old granddaughter, Jailiany Correa.

After having to swim out of her nearby house during the hurricane, Delgado started volunteering in the center. Her experience as a volunteer and a teacher, she said, helped her recover quickly from that traumatic experience.

“I lost everything. So I know that I know what everybody else went through,” said Delgado. “It was helpful for me in not thinking of what I lost – and just to help out others to recover.”

As for her granddaughter, Jailiany’s mornings were spent with other children, learning and playing games .

That experience changed her, ” said the grandmother. “She was a little shy kid. Now she’s just this little tiny kid who just wants to have fun every day.”

Nearly two years after the hurricane, Centro Esperanza is still being rebuilt, but its work in the community continues.  It started new programs, such as Melodías de Esperanza (Melodies of Hope), a prevention program focused on reaching children through music, and La Mochila Alegre (The Happy Backpack), a nutrition program which provides children with healthy meals.

Priscilla Malavet

Priscilla Malavet is a recent graduate of the School of Communication University of Puerto Rico – Río Piedras campus with a bachelor’s degree in journalism as well as a minor in women and gender studies. Malavet’s areas of interest include cultural analysis, gender and women issues, pop culture and social media’s engagement culture. She has published research on the topic of sharenting, the overuse of social media by parents to share content about their children.  She covered stories on Planned Parenthood for Latinas and the migration of Puerto Rican students after Hurricane María.

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While many Americans spend their evenings in their living rooms, absorbing the warm glow of television or enjoying the company of others, Ingram doesn’t have that option.

The 66-year-old hasn’t had the option since Hurricane Michael nine months ago.

Since the storm, his living room is now the space beside the road that runs through the heart of Lynn Haven Mobile Home Park, reclined into the tattered furniture that remains there. 

On Oct. 10, 2018, Hurricane Michael destroyed Ingram’s trailer when the storm rolled in off the Gulf Coast and forever changed the Florida Panhandle. In fact, only a few of the 47 trailers in the Lynn Haven Mobile Home Park are still in anything close to livable condition. 

“After Michael, we told them we can’t repair anything, we can’t do anything,” said Sher Hay, the property manager of Lynn Haven Mobile Home Park. “None of this is fixable.”

The Panama City area is facing a housing crisis that has put the community in an economic bind. While the area depends on tourism for a significant portion of its economy, locals throughout the area said that wages earned waiting tables, working at hotels and running tourism excursions is hardly enough to afford inflated rental prices that are partially caused by the need to house visitors to the beach while the rest of the city recovers.

Ingram was once a fisherman. The nearby coast offered plenty of work for him at that time and the tourist-centric Panama City Beach guaranteed a high demand for his services. Now, that same tourism industry is contributing to a housing crisis that resulted in Ingram, because of his age, facing homelessness for the first time in his life.

He relies on disability checks to cover his living expenses. But with housing in the Panama City area at a premium due to inflated rental rates, he said he is no longer able to afford housing on his income. 

“There’s plenty of places to live, but they want to charge what they can charge,” Ingram said.

Albert Byrd, 19, lives in the same trailer park as Ingram. His home withstood the storm, and despite being damaged significantly, it is one of a handful of remaining units that is still occupied. 

“Now, everything is pretty much gone,” Byrd said. “Everything I’ve ever known, everything I’ve ever loved.”

Byrd was born and raised in Lynn Haven, in the same trailer he now shares with his mother. But not for long. Byrd and Ingram, along with all residents still living in the trailer park, are being evicted. 

They have until August of this year to move out or they will face eviction, according to Hay, the mobile home park’s property manager. 

“People were very angry, and I understand,” Hay said. “But, you don’t have to be angry with me about it. You need to be angry with whatever supreme being you believe in, or Mother Nature, or whatever. Because I didn’t create Michael, I promise.”

Since the storm ripped through Lynn Haven in October, Hay said that most of the park has been without water, sewage and electricity. She refunded deposits to all tenants after the storm on the condition that they would have to move out. Hay said she hasn’t collected any rent since the storm hit in October 2018.

Despite the lack of facilities and request for them to vacate, several tenants stayed in the park. Squatters and looters flocked to the area as well, according to Hay. 

She, along with her family, runs Al Harlen Rentals and own several other rental properties throughout the area. With no insurance and no choice to rebuild,  the Lynn Haven Mobile Home Park is currently for sale, Hay said.  

Upon eviction, tenants will be thrust into a seller’s market, she said. 

“It is high,” Hay said. “Most people’s rents are very, very high right now and there is no low-income housing to speak of, because most of that was low-end built, also, and Michael just tore it to shreds.”

Hay recognized that it is unlikely that anyone displaced from the mobile home park will be able to find comparable housing in the area for close to the same price they paid before the storm. 

“I know it’s very difficult to find housing right now,” Hay said. 

But is it possible?

“Probably not,” Hay added. “No.”

Nine months after the storm, Ingram remains homeless. Without a home — or the means to find another one — he spends his nights outside of the trailer where he once lived, nestled in to a faded sofa, surrounded by downed trees and dilapidated homes. Holding his un-ashed cigarette, he said he thinks about how life used to be. 

Jake Goodrick

Jake Goodrick is a recent graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, earning a master’s degree in sports journalism. Before Cronkite, he graduated summa cum laude from Cleveland State University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. As a reporter for Cronkite News and Arizona PBS, Goodrick covered the Phoenix Suns, ASU men’s basketball and the Chicago White Sox. His work can be found in The Arizona Republic, Indian Country Today, The Navajo Times and MLB.com.

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They gathered around a cooler on a makeshift bench beside the front door and wiped their brows as they took a mini-break from their day of labor – a change from their usual school routine.

Originally from Saint Paul, Minnesota, the teenagers traveled to Texas to volunteer alongside their church group to rebuild homes that were destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

After a long process of researching communities and contacting organizations, the young volunteers from Macalester Plymouth United Church decided to spend their time working with Houston Responds, a voluntary group that unites church coalitions to support community recovery efforts.

The team behind Houston Responds launched a campaign called “Far From Finished” with the aim of reminding the public that a post-disaster crisis still remains in Houston, almost two years after the devastating storm ripped through communities. 

According to Gov. Greg Abbott’s Commission to Rebuild Texas, over $539 million has been spent on housing and other disaster expenses in Houston as of January 2019  – but many people are still displaced or living in unrepaired homes.

The home the children were rebuilding, belonging to 74-year-old Leola Davis, was one of many in need of repair in Independence Heights, a historically black community in Houston. Over the space of one weekend, two different volunteer groups stepped into the flood-wrecked home.

Colleen Henneke, a Houston Responds volunteer from the Bayou City Fellowship, continues to evaluate homes in the neighborhood for flood damage. She said that while the destructive storm caused major damage to the area, the response and recovery efforts have brought communities together.

Henneke said that some of the houses were in bad conditions before Harvey came, which was one of the reasons there was not a lot of help in the area. She explained that some of the local churches are not well-resourced and don’t have a lot of general extra funds. 

“It really takes the bigger churches to love on an area like this to get the rebuilds done,” Henneke said.

“I believe that God allowed this storm to happen at a time when this city needed to come together and churches needed to come together.”

Other residents spoke about an increased faith in God during the recovery period, something Henneke noticed as a church volunteer.

A 2015 study from the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen found that many individuals turn to religion after disasters “to deal with unbearable and unpredictable life events”.

The predominantly white volunteer leaders said their initial efforts required building trust with the Independence Heights community. Two years later, the evidence it worked was the praise local residents had for the volunteers.

“To build trust, we just kept showing up,” Henneke said. “These are our neighbors. We’ve got lots of people who can go on missions, but you can go on mission in your backyard if you live in Houston.” 

The Minnesota highschool teenagers were one of many out-of-state groups that are still coming to Houston to help rebuild hurricane-stricken homes. Despite the change of climate and strenuous work, the teenagers said they’re passionate about the work they’re doing. 

“It’s dirty, and it’s hard work, but it needs to be done,” 15-year-old Annie Delma said.

“Before we came here, we watched a video that the organization we’re with showed us and it was actually of the person who owns this home. Just hearing the stories, our group is a very connecting group, and so we really empathize with these people.”

Annie added that while they may be young, they believe they can make a difference this summer by helping the struggling homeowners.

“It’s been two years after Harvey and we came to this house and it was completely gutted,” Annie said. “This woman was not able to live in her house anymore. I can’t imagine not being able to live in my house.”

One of their leaders for the trip, Michael Eugene Florey, described how doing the physical work and seeing the damage was a learning curve for the schoolchildren.

“It shows them how much they can do,” Florey said.” For a lot of the smaller kids, waking up in the morning saying ‘I can run a staple gun or a drywall drill,’ they can just expand their imagination of what they can do and accomplish, it’s fantastic.”

Florey said the kids want to be of service, they want to help. 

He added that “it’s been great to come down and see it first-hand, to see how great the need is, and how resilient the people who are still living here are.”

Rachel Farrell

Rachel Farrell is a graduate of Dublin City University in Ireland. Farrell works as a news reporter for Independent.ie, Ireland’s largest breaking news website. She covered major events such as the pope’s visit to Dublin in 2018, the referendum on abortion and Brexit. She is a regular style and entertainment contributor and broke national news stories for the Irish Independent and The Herald newspapers. Examples of her work can be found here.

independent.ie/opinion/independent-journalists/rachel-farrell/

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“This is not us just because of Hurricane Michael,” Summers said. “We’ve never lived in the house by ourselves. We’ve always been helping people.”

Summers and her husband, Sam, built their house 20 years ago on the Florida Panhandle, located 25 minutes outside of Panama City. When Hurricane Michael hit their community in October, the Summers and their 7-year old daughter, Gabby, instantly opened their property to more than 50 people who were displaced by the Category 5 storm, something they’ve done many times before.

Now, eight months and counting since Michael hit, the number of residents fluctuates weekly as families save enough money to move out or new families move in. When News21 visited in early June, 22 people were temporary residents.

When people arrive at what Summers refers to as a “tent community,” most have few possessions on them, if they have any at all. Summers noted that some even lack basic toiletries such as a toothbrush.

“Our goal is to help them get on their feet [and] save their money, so when the time does come, whenever they get the housing available, they have the money to start over,” Summers said. “It’s tedious, but it’s worth it.”

Residents are housed in tents, which Summers admits is not ideal, but she ensures each tent is equipped with air conditioning, electricity and real mattresses in an attempt to try and provide a  sense of normalcy. Residents are granted full access to the main house to watch television or cool off, and every night there is a home cooked meal, a combined effort between the temporary residents and Summers that adds a true community feel.

The Summers do all this without charging a penny. While a few local churches donate food and supplies to help Summers provide for her community, the rest of the costs and sacrifices fall on Shelly and her husband.

“We have spent a lot of money on this, but that’s OK, and we would do it all over again,” Summers said.

The Summers attribute their “strict community morals, values and standards” to their individual upbringings.

Although residents are not required to pay rent, maintaining a community with this many people and over 100 animals — mostly rabbits — requires assistance, which is why Shelly asks her residents to give back by helping around the property.

“Whether it’s pick up trash or vacuum the house or help put the donations up, do something. You have to do something. And for the most part everybody pretty much does chip in,” she said.

Shelly has just three rules for residents: no drinking, no drugs and no drama. Failure to comply with those three will result in eviction from the tent community.

“My neighbors will tell you we’re very quiet. [They] didn’t even know we were doing this until the news started showing up,” Summers said.

Amanda Bohn said she and her husband and their three children — two sons and one daughter — arrived in March, and they will continue to stay until they can afford to put themselves in a home.

Bohn did not want to ask for help when she and her family got evicted from their home after Hurricane Michael, but she decided that living on the Summers’ property was better than living in an RV on a vacant lot.

“Shelly is a blessing for what she is doing,” Bohn said. “A lot of us would probably be sleeping under a bridge or under some trees somewhere.”

In just a few months, Shelly has had several success stories, including a family who recently relocated to West Virginia. But as people continue to struggle and recover from the hurricane and its aftermath, the Summers family will welcome them into their home, no matter the cost.

“The ultimate goal is to get them in their own permanent housing,” Summers said. “But until that’s available, we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing.”

Peter Nicieja

Peter Nicieja is a senior at DePauw University pursuing a degree in music with a second major in communication. Nicieja has held various leadership positions with student media organizations, including programming director for DePauw’s radio station, WGRE, news editor for The DePauw newspaper, and producer for D3TV, the campus TV station.  Nicieja also has a background in filmmaking and graphic design.

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In late May, Cynthia Murphy desperately tried to find out when and where the water was going to come, but in the small town of Blackwell, Arkansas, there is no news station. There isn’t even a post office.

“I live in a small community that never gets mentioned on the news, or on Facebook, or anywhere else,” she said. “There was no information available.”

Cynthia has worked online for most of her life. She was a recruiter for many years and has always admired the way that the Internet bridges the gaps that news outlets can’t fill.

“I was thinking, too bad there’s not a group where people were posting pictures of what’s going on in each neighborhood, or each little community,” Cynthia said.

A Family Affair

Melanie Murphy, Cynthia’s youngest daughter, also craved more information about the flooding. She followed countless storm chasers, journalists and meteorologists on social media. When her mother suggested they start a Facebook group, she was hesitant at first.

“I didn’t want people to get their news solely from our group,” Melanie said.

The amount of crowdsourcing made her fearful of accidentally spreading misinformation. And as with any social media forum, she knew things could get political.

In the end, the need for it outweighed any risks, Melanie said.

“I didn’t want people to miss out on important information,” she said.

The mother-daughter team created the Arkansas River Historic Flood 2019 group on May 25. In its first day, the group acquired 52 members and then grew beyond anything they ever expected.

“I had a couple of people in mind that were already sharing pictures and videos of the flood, so I thought maybe I’d send them an invite,” Melanie said. “They all joined and then they invited all their friends.”

The Murphys’ hunch was correct: people wanted information quicker than the news could put it out, making this group the perfect way to stay updated. And as the river level rose, so did the group’s numbers.

“I thought maybe 200 or 300 people might be out there, but apparently there is really a need,” Cynthia said.

People from all over Arkansas requested to join. They posted photos, asked questions, offered help and shared their stories.

“There are people from out of state that would join because they have family members here and they could follow what was going on,” Cynthia said.

The group created a sense of community, inspiring some Arkansans to go above and beyond to help those they had never met … literally.

Help From Above

Bill Collins is an agricultural pilot and a lifelong Arkansan. His home wasn’t affected by the flooding, but because he spends most of his time in the sky, he had a bird’s eye view of the areas that weren’t so lucky.

Collins, along with his best friend, Dubs Beyers, noticed that people in the Facebook group were distressed about not knowing the status of the water levels in their homes, which they had to evacuate.

“It was a tremendous amount of water, and it was still rising,” said Collins, adding he had never seen a flood of this magnitude hit the Natural State.The evacuated families could only use boats to get to their homes, which looked like scattered rooftops poking out of the murky, brown water.

Wanting to bring these families closure, the two friends took to the air. Collins piloted his two-seater plane with Beyers in tow with a camera. They toured the damage from above, snapping photos of homes and farms to post in the Facebook group.

“It gave them a sense of relief to know what was happening and what to expect,” Collins said.

He didn’t personally know any of the families affected by the water he was flying over, but he says that’s the beauty of the Arkansas community: “When I see somebody someplace, I know who he is, how it affects them, where they’re coming from and where their heart is.”

There are many more examples of group members offering their time and resources through the forum that the Murphys created.

“I’m just thankful that we were able to help anybody,” Cynthia said.

Switching Gears

Now that the river has crested and the water is beginning to recede, the group has taken a new direction: promoting recovery efforts. The news cycle has moved on, but people are just now returning to their homes. The damage that lies before them will take months to undo.

“We don’t want people to forget about them,” Melanie said of the flood victims.

The Murphys have spent countless hours working on this group. Melanie’s screentime was clocked at 80 hours in one week at the peak of the flooding. She plans to create a spinoff group based around photography to continue building community in Arkansas.

“I don’t want a bad disaster to be the only thing bringing people together,” Melanie said.

Cynthia is proud of Melanie’s dedication to the group and her newfound leadership skills. “It was nice to see Melanie’s self-confidence,” she said. “I’ve seen her just blossom over the last two weeks.”

Melanie is currently unemployed, so monitoring, moderating and managing this Facebook group became her full-time job. She says that it helped her in her struggle with depression as well, giving her a sense of purpose.

“To be able to step out of my comfort zone and help people… it’s a big step in my life,” Melanie said.

As of June 12, more than 16,000 people have joined and remain the group. Even as the immediate need for information has slowed down, the Murphys plan to leave the group open as an artifact to remember the history that was made, something that Cynthia supports.

“Ten years from now, a school kid might decide to report that, and this group could come up,” Cynthia said.

Jordan Elder

Jordan Elder is a recent graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a certificate in leadership and ethics. Her focus is on broadcasting and digital storytelling. Elder was a producer for “Catalyst,” an Arizona PBS series that explores scientific research at ASU, and a production intern for KPNX 12 News for two semesters. She served as a host and contributor to the entertainment news program “Cronkite Cut” for three years. Elder returns to Cronkite School in the fall to complete a master’s degree and report on sustainability issues for Cronkite News. View her portfolio here.

jordanelder.wixsite.com/home

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“It’s like a freight train,” said McCullough about the 2011 tornado that destroyed a third of the homes in Joplin, Missouri.

“This one had more of a grinding noise because of all the cars that were in there hitting one another.”

Glass cut his feet as he ran down from the second floor apartment. Within an hour of the tornado striking Joplin, McCullough began working with the Ozark Center, a nonprofit mental health center.

He did not stop for weeks. As a mobile crisis counselor, McCullough was used to providing mental health counseling after deadly events, but nothing on this scale.

Six minutes after the seventh deadliest tornado in the U.S. hit, St. John’s Regional Medical Center was on fire. In all, 161 people died. The disaster left over 1,150 injured. The tornado flattened 13 miles and destroyed 8,000 buildings.

McCullough and others at the Ozark Center realized their city of 50,000, didn’t have enough counseling help to handle the wave of people traumatized by the storm, leading them to train those without proper mental health backgrounds to provide emotional support to those who didn’t need clinical help, but someone to listen and provide emotional support.

The Ozark Center program, Healing Joplin, is now a national model used by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for how a smaller community can provide mental health services after a major disaster, said Vicky Mieseeler, chief administrative officer at the Ozark Center.  

Healing Joplin still operates, serving 195,000 people in the Joplin area over the last eight years. It has provided crisis counseling to over 21,000 people who said they had never sought mental health help before, according to the center.  

The mental health program also provided employment to 47 Joplin residents who lost jobs because of businesses destroyed by the storm.

“They were able to get a job and get back on their feet. But they were also helping others, which was incredibly important to many people in the community,” Mieseler said.

Before the tornado, Ozark Center crisis center received an average of 400 calls per month, but the year after the tornado the calls doubled each month. Even now, eight years after the storm, more people still are seeking counseling, some of them people who never would have thought of needing mental health help, McCullough said.

“Midwest culture is to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and take care of business,” McCullough said. “People were more worried about their neighbors than themselves, but when they really started thinking about it, they weren’t OK.”

McCullogh said the Ozark Center created Healing Joplin after reading studies that indicated people who survived 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina didn’t necessarily need clinical help, but did need someone to talk to in the following months and years.

“We’re further ahead than anybody would expect us to be at this stage,” McCullough said. “Joplin had an amazing response.”

Mieseler said that sometimes people would be busy for years before life slowed down and tornado victims realized they still needed help. A 2008 study “Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following disasters,” in Psychological Medicine showed post-disaster PTSD is still “substantial” after almost 30 years, especially in cases where there was a high death toll.

Ozark Center officials know members of their community still struggle with mental health issues. McCullough said some people still reference time based off the tornado, even eight years since it split the town in two.  

The center also helps people who didn’t realize for years that they were traumatized by the storm – until their busy lives showed down. The Ozark Center also welcomed researchers into their community, to measure the psychological impact of the storm.

While depression subsided after the storm, some residents later suffered post traumatic stress, according to one study.

Two and a half years after the tornado, Brian Houston, the director of the Disaster and Community Crisis Center at the University of Missouri, did a study finding that while the number of people who had depression symptoms decreased by about 8 percent, PTSD increased by about 14 percent. That would mean over a quarter of Joplin’s tornado survivors were likely battling PTSD at the time, according to his study.

“Immediately after a disaster, you’ll often see things like #JoplinStrong and that helps some people cope in the short-term,” Houston said. “But then with the challenges of rebuilding or recovering from an event, the realities settles in. People are going to face those realities and struggle.”

His study found those less educated and under the poverty line had a higher risk of PTSD. Nearly 18 percent of people in Joplin are under the poverty line. Only a quarter of Joplin residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

“The recovery time for the major events is not short and can take quite a bit of time,” Houston said.

For some, that recovery is still ongoing, even eight years later. Joshua Lockwood was 21 when the tornado hit his hometown. At first, he said he was fine, aside from a hard time sleeping, but that it was “about 2016” that he realized something was wrong and went to seek help. He wound up diagnosed with PTSD, depression and anxiety and said his anxiety symptoms prevent him from driving when it is raining.

“I still have those dreams every once in a while, but my dreams were getting more tornado-centric,” Lockwood said. “Coupled with it getting close to storm season, I realized I’m still kind of messed up.”

Lockwood’s struggle mirrors his community’s, which continues to this day and gets exacerbated when new tornadoes hit in or near Joplin. The most recent such tornado happened on the eight-year anniversary of the 2011 tornado, when tornadoes hit the nearby towns of Golden City and Carl Junction on May 22-23.

But McCullough and Healing Joplin were there to provide mental first aid for the communities in southwest Missouri, just as they were for Joplin when they were needed the most.

Sarah Beth Guevara

Sarah Beth Guevara is a senior at the University of Oklahoma where she is finishing a degree in journalism and a minor in vocal music. She currently serves as president of  the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at OU. She is also a Gaylord Ambassador. The bilingual journalist has interned with the Enid News and Eagle and News 9. She’s also written for OU Nightly, Gaylord News Oklahoma, Monkey Cage….and [UNFILTERED], a student media project with KWTV News 9. In the fall she will be a wire reporter for Gaylord News in Washington, D.C.

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