There’s about 6 feet from the hillside to the backside of her trailer’s garage, and the water level was rising up the side of the garage quickly. With her then 6-year-old great niece Payton Smith with her, Shafer opened the back door of her garage, but the water started to flow into the garage rapidly, too. But fixing that turned out to be easy.

“I just opened the garage door and let it keep flowing down to the creek,” Shafer said.

Shafer was able to keep the flooding from destroying her garage, but it completely devastated the basement of her Clendenin, West Virginia house and left it covered in mold. For three years, there’s been no way to fix that. There’s a creek in between the trailer and the road, and the flood destroyed the bridge that crossed the creek.

Now, three years later, Shafer and her partner Wayne Tyler are finally getting their bridge rebuilt, thanks to the West Virginia chapter of the Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters, known by the acronym VOAD.

For Jenny Gannaway, executive director of WV VOAD, being able to direct where all of the volunteers go is vital to making sure the organizations are “not stepping on each other’s toes.”

“For instance, with all the flood buckets after a flood, we don’t want them all to go to one town and not the other towns,” Gannaway said. “We coordinate together and we work together so that everybody is taken care of.”

It was Gannaway’s idea to start the Bridge Project in the aftermath of the 2015 and 2016 flooding in the state, which hit Clendenin particularly hard. While FEMA declared both federal disasters, damage that occurs on private properties can’t be touched by either the federal or state governments.

“There’s a lot of things we can do that the state and the federal government can’t do,” Gannaway said, referencing the 2012 derecho that drilled West Virginia. “A lot of trees fell on top of houses. The state government could clean trees off of roads, but they couldn’t take the trees off of houses. That was very important to have the voluntary agencies that are skilled and able to go in and cut trees off houses, put tarps on houses.”

One of the main VOAD organizations helping with the Bridge Project is the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) Based out of Lititz, Pennsylvania. One of the seven founding members of the National VOAD back in 1970, MDS Executive Director Kevin King said the faith-based organization knows no other way to be.

“I think it’s in our genes. We take the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospels seriously, where Jesus says, ‘Whatever you have done unto the least of these, my brethren and sisters, you’ve done unto me.’ Our churches, our volunteers see this as a way of practicing their faith in a real hands-on, tangible way.”

Being able to show up in-person as volunteers and do hard, physical labor like with the bridges is the most vital thing a VOAD like MDS can do, according to Gannaway. But money matters too, and King says 75% of MDS funding come from their fellow Mennonites, in whatever increments they can get.

“Recently, a 10-year-old child came in here and said they had a lemonade stand and they gave us their 16, 17 dollars from that for disasters,” King said. “And a donor last week called and said, ‘I hear you’re buying a tool trailer for the recent tornadoes. I’d like to contribute $20,000.’ So most of our giving is from our constituents and from our churches.”

The Mennonite Disaster Service was not at Shafer’s home to help build her bridge, but the workers from WV VOAD who were there wore shirts from MDS. Gannaway said that MDS was essential for getting the project kicked off and reaching their goal of a simple and duplicable blueprint.

“What we wanted was something like a cookie cutter project that volunteers can do,” Gannaway said. “We have a design now that is mitigating and raising the bridges up out of the creeks. But it’s in there safe and secure because we use a power drive to drill into bedrock.

“So if those bridges come out, we’re all in trouble.”

That’s really important for Shafer. The 78-year-old woman has lived at the same location for more than 30 years and has watched the creek flood three times. But 2016’s flood was by far the worst, and scattered things all throughout Clendenin.

“I’ve seen stuff wash down this creek that you wouldn’t believe could wash down a creek,” Shafer said. “Baby swimming pools and balls and coolers. I caught one cooler that belonged to a man who lived nearby, and he came down and said, ‘That’s my cooler.’ I said,’ Yeah, I fished it out of the creek with a rake.’  It’s been weird and it’s been a long, hard time, but we’ve made it so far.”

The mold is only adding more complications to Shafer’s already dire health situation. She’s been sick for the past nine years, saying the doctors she’s seen, “don’t know, to this day, what happened to me.”

It’s taken a turn for the worst at times since the flooding. But there’s one thing that Shafer credits for keeping her alive: her great-niece Payton, now 9 years old.

“When I got really sick, this little girl took over me. And if it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t be here today,” Shafer said. “I used to get out of bed at 10 o’clock in the morning, lay down there on that couch until about 10 o’clock at night, then go to bed. I didn’t have no energy, I didn’t care whether I ate. I don’t remember what happened and I didn’t care. But now? I’m gonna make it.”

Thanks to her great niece’s uplifting spirit, Shafer’s excited for what will happen with a new bridge that can accommodate major construction equipment. Shafter and Tyler are moving to a temporary house while someone comes in to replace their trailer with a brand new one. She only has one request for her new trailer: raise it as high as they can put it.

“I hope it’s 5 feet in the air,” Shafer said. “Then I won’t never have no more trouble with water.”

And because people like Shafer are still feeling the impact of the floods more than three years after they happened, Gannaway said there’s more work they can continue to do.

“We’re still as busy today as we were then with helping families recover,” Gannaway said. “To see what we had to do with recovery, I think we’ve done a great job. I think we’ve learned a lot that we can take forward.”

And Shafer could not be more grateful.

“I really am glad that they’ve done it for me,” Shafer said. “Now, my mind runs 24 hours a day trying to figure out what to do next.”

News21 reporters Allie Barton, Briana Castañón, Justine Coleman and Isaac Windes contributed to this report.

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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.

The post Having faith when disaster strikes appeared first on State of Emergency | News21.

When Anderson took over she raised the shelves 37 inches off the ground and came up with a plan complete with “hurricane angels,” or members of the community who activate at a moment’s notice to prepare the store for extreme flooding.

But despite the preparation, Anderson was taken off guard when the remnants of Hurricane Michael inundated her store with water in October 2018 . She arrived at the store hours after the flooding hit.

“It was heartbreaking, particularly because a month earlier Hurricane Florence was supposed to hit us,” Anderson said. “At that time we were prepared, … we had nothing within 36 inches of the floor.”

“So if that had happened in Florence I wouldn’t have lost a paper bag,” she said.

The storm dropped a massive amount of rain, filling the store with 24 inches of water. 

“We had not moved everything, which we do a lot of times because it wasn’t even a hurricane by the time it came through our area,”  she said. “It had been downgraded to a tropical storm – it was supposed to be much further west and skirt us.”

The raised shelves saved the majority of the books, but $11,000 of merchandise on the lower shelves were destroyed, including some staple reads.

“There was a lot of stuff in the kids in the kids section that I needed to replace,” she said. “I lost all my Harry Potter and stuff like that.”

The community came together to clear out the lost merchandise, catalog the damage and help clear out the water.

“At one point I counted 36 volunteers in the store, everything from church youth groups to teachers that I work with, people who live in the upstairs apartments, other business owners,” she said.  

During Hurricane Florence, the store closed for five days under a mandatory evacuation costing $5,000 in profit. In addition to the loss in merchandise, the small store’s owner had to dip into winter savings. 

“It took seven weeks with insurance to start replacing some of the books,” Anderson said. “You can’t not have Harry Potter.”

Facing those losses, Anderson was encouraged to reach out to an organization that provides financial relief to bookstores in a variety of stressful situations called the Book Industry Charitable Foundation.

Within 48 hours of reaching out to BINC, they cleared checks to help her pay for rent. 

According to their website, the Binc Foundation “provides financial assistance to brick and mortar bookstore employees working full-time or part-time who demonstrate a personal financial need arising from severe hardship and/or emergency circumstances.” 

Natural disasters are one of many events BINC helps to cover.

While many small businesses are hurt after natural disasters, bookstores are hit particularly hard. 

“We’ve got that online competitor is just out there and ubiquitous,” Anderson said. “You know it’s not like oh ‘this such a cute pink shirt, I guess I’ll come back tomorrow,’” she said. “This is like ‘oh, I’ll just go home and order it online.’ ” 

Pam French, executive director of BINC, said the danger bookstores face is not only for themselves, or for their communities. 

“Losing any sales can be a huge challenge for a bookshop, and also then for that community because that bookstore is there to provide not only the sales of books, but often it’s a gathering space for a community to come together once they’ve had … a natural disaster.”

That issue is a problem for bookstores across the country. In 2015 severe storms hit the small island of Bainbridge, Washington. Eagle Harbor Book Co. has faced severe weather in recent years, and owner Jane Danielson discussed the possible impacts of long-term closure.

“In most cases there’s a few loyal customers who will only come here. But for the most part they will finally establish that Amazon account and start using it,” Danielson said. 

Those loyal customers, however, are not enough to keep small bookstores like that one open. During the summer months they count on tourist dollars.

“So if that is depressed or if that goes away or is severely diminished we would not stay in business,” Danielson said. “We just don’t have strong enough margins in the book industry to weather something like that.”

In addition to being a place to buy books, bookstores are mainstay of communities, where people gather to meet, hold events and other activities. 

“There’s been a bookstore in the space that I occupy for over 30 years,” Anderson said. 

She called it an anchor for downtown in her North Carolina hometown, and a destination for generations of Manteo residents.

People come in all the time, who say: “My grandparents used to bring me to the store, my parents used to bring me this store,” Anderson said. “Now they’re bringing their kids to the store.”

French said there has been an uptick in disasters, but as long as disasters continue to impact bookstores, BINC will act as a buffer for them.

“There are a lot of folks that work retail, and they aren’t there to get rich,” French said. “They’re there because they love books, they love stores. They are not unlike most of the population in the U.S. and that is that they are one emergency or one disaster away from losing their house, from having their utilities turned off or having to declare bankruptcy.

“We are hoping that we can be what keeps them from that disaster.”

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That is the first thing that agencies try to assess after a disaster hits, whether it is damage assessment of a tornado, flooding, fires, volcanoes or ice.  Damage assessments allow emergency responders to develop a full picture and the areas that were hit the worst. 

Technology for assessing this damage has evolved over the years. From film to high-resolution digital aerial photos to drones, there are a multitude of ways to get imagery of damaged areas. For the volunteers of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), that is their entire mission if they are tasked by state emergency management. 

“With aerial photography, we have some very sophisticated tools that we use that provide latitude and longitude encoded in the digital data that we provide to the to the emergency response agencies,” said Civil Air Patrol Lt. Col. David McCollum, director of emergency services for the Oklahoma CAP wing.

State and local agencies were the typical partners for those CAP missions, but now federal agencies are using them more regularly. Even when preparing for a disaster to hit, CAP is one of the first calls when working through the disaster support framework, said Lt. Col. John Desmarais, director of operations for the Civil Air Patrol.

An Air Force auxiliary, the Civil Air Patrol is made up of civilian volunteers who perform emergency services like search and rescue missions, organs and human tissue transport, and aerial damage assessment photography. After 9/11, a Civil Air Patrol airplane was the only nonmilitary aircraft allowed to fly. It provided high-resolution pictures of the World Trade Center site and began doing more imaging like this with federal funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Civil Air Patrol volunteers have responded to many disasters around the U.S., including the 2013 Moore tornado in Oklahoma, the 2018 Kīlauea volcanic eruptions in Hawaii, and flooding along the Arkansas River earlier this year. They conduct around 75 disaster missions a year across the country, said Desmarais.

“We’ll use local airplanes and crews to go up and take some of that initial damage assessment photos to identify where problems are,” he said. 

He said these photos help first responders understand where roads and bridges might be out so they can plan response routes faster. They also provide their imagery to state agencies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to identify people who live in areas that will need assistance. 

McCollum cut a beach vacation short this year to help gather imagery for the Oklahoma Office of Emergency Management. In May 2019, all of Oklahoma’s 77 counties were placed under a state of emergency due to flooding, and CAP documented any infrastructure that was impacted by floodwaters. He said he flew missions three to four times a day every day for about two weeks. Overall, the Oklahoma CAP wing provided around 100,000 aerial images per day during the flooding. 

“We’re very highly trained, we’re very highly motivated,” said McCollum. “Oklahoma is an incredibly rural state. But when something happens … you’ve never seen people come together and give you the shirt off their back like the people in this state will.
”

The biggest events they have supported in the past include the 2017 hurricane season, helping with Harvey in Houston, Maria is Puerto Rico and Irma in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Civil Air Patrol is still operating in Puerto Rico, taking photos of the electrical power grid with sensory systems that are able to create high-resolution 3D images for groups to be able to see the progress in restoring power.

Civil Air Patrol has a national emergency service academy every summer that runs between 500-600 participants each year. Additionally, they try to provide training CAP at a local levels to make it easier for volunteers. 

Members of CAP will fly in aircraft and do damage assessment, or other related missions like flying routes to identify firelines for agencies to use for real-time planning when trying to assign firefighters. Using CAP for these missions is much less expensive and more locally available than federal resources. For Houston operations after Hurricane Harvey, the support CAP provided cost a couple hundred thousand dollars, but federal agencies estimated it would have been between $18-$20 million to use urban contractors or federal resources, Desmarais said. 

“I think they see the value of what they’re doing hands-on in the field,” Desmarais said of the volunteer forces that make up CAP. “I think they see the benefit because they know that they’re helping their neighbors.”

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“We’re really not a big congregation,” said Rosetta Davis. “We just gonna go on in the name of the Lord.”

Water permeated inside the church after Hurricane Florence struck in September 2018. Deacon Davis said the tiny congregation shrank after the church closed for months following the flood.

Like many small communities in eastern South Carolina, Bucksport was slammed by two 500-year floods in three years  – Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Florence last year. Many in the community of roughly 1,000 have lived in the region their entire lives, but the storms haven’t made it easy to stay.

Minutes after the service began, a few people arrived, including Ivory Williamson who wed at the chapel in 1991. 

“This is home,” said Williamson. “I’ve been out here 30 years and I never ever had to walk out my yard or walk anywhere in water unless it was a puddle.” 

Williamson said the flood, which severely damaged about 10 homes on her street, caused some longtime Bucksport residents to leave. Some living in homes inherited by ancestors evacuated to shelters and then permanently relocated.  Others vow to return if they can find the money to rebuild.

Nelisa Geathers was born and raised in Bucksport. Hurricane Matthew caused some damage to her home but Florence forced her to live into multiple shelters for months. 

Only a fireplace, a table set and a wall decoration stood after water seeped inside her home.

“When I came in my house, all I could do was cry because everything was mold. I mean, my furniture, my clothes, my bedroom set, my grandkids’ stuff, all my pictures,” Geathers said. “Everything was gone.”

After raising her one-story home with cinder blocks to protect herself from future flooding, Geathers said she wants to lift it even higher.

“I’m grateful because nobody lost their life,” Geathers said. “We have to come back together and we got to help each other because we don’t know what’s going to happen from now on.”

Nichols, a rural farming community an hour north of Bucksport, sits between the Lumber and Little Pee Dee River. Matthew and Florence left the town of 400 people underwater. 

It took more than a year for Dianna Owens’ home to rebuild after Matthew before Florence flooded it again. 

“This is a demon monster coming in,” she said, describing when Matthew approached. 

As water gushed into town, older people were forcibly removed, Owens said. A man stood on top of his pickup while venomous snakes slithered past him. Seven kids living under one roof held on to a rope made of sheets and blankets as they walked through water to reach higher ground. 

Rose Campbell has lived in Nichols for almost 70 years. The night she evacuated from Matthew, she kept her eyes shut as she and her husband traveled in waist-deep water toward an evacuation site.

“The scene sounded like a roaring ocean and I kept my eyes closed,” Campbell said. “It just kept roaring as it was traveling through the water and my heart stopped.”

She laid down on the floor as she processed the chaos Matthew brought. She recalled refusing to eat and struggled to remain composed in front of her husband and child. 

Bugs, frogs, crickets and rats infested her home. Mold destroyed her clothes while her food rotted.

Campbell used the majority of her savings to fix the damage. Two years later, Florence put her back to square one after it ravaged her home again. 

Nightmares and panic attacks were frequent for Campbell after Matthew but she felt mentally stronger to handle Florence. She turned to her faith and the community to lift her spirits. 

“I thank God for a lot of my citizens here in Nichols who stood by me,” she said. 

Marion County Long Term Recovery Group supervisor Roosevelt Campbell said more recovery funding is required to help people return to their homes, especially older residents who live on a fixed income.

“There’s not a lot of extra income for people in that age group. They just don’t have it,” Roosevelt Campbell said. “It’s been three [years] since Matthew … and people are just now receiving homes.”

Owens, who also works with the Marion County recovery group, said she feels apprehensive about moving back into her home after living with family members, but said she’ll take her chances once more.

 “Part of me wanted to remain there because my daddy built that house with his bare hands,” Owens said. “I’m going back this time and if [another disaster] should happen, I have no problem leaving that house.”

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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.”

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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.

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Then came Michael. 

On Oct. 10, 2018, Hurricane Michael landed at Mexico Beach, Florida, and swept across the Gulf Coast westward through Panama City. The brunt of the damage from the massive storm stopped short of the highway bridge that divides the tourist-hub Panama City Beach from its underlooked neighbor, Panama City proper.

Along with leveled buildings, downed electric poles and wide scale debris, the storm also brought psychological trauma upon Panhandle residents who, more than eight months after the hurricane, are still recovering physically and mentally. 

“People here, whenever we hear a heavy wind, we see the rain, now we get the PTSD, the anxiety, the depression,” Dossie said. “I’m seeing a psychiatrist about it. I have no problems telling everybody about it.”

Since Hurricane Michael, many residents of the Florida Panhandle – including Dossie – have dealt with mental health issues related to the storm. 

As many as four in 10 survivors can experience a mental or behavioral disorder after a natural disaster, according to the American Psychological Society.

A study on mental health from Bay District Schools reported a shortage of mental health resources in Bay County was made worse with the increased need for mental health services after Hurricane Michael. 

Project Hope is a prevention-oriented crisis counseling program in Panama City funded by FEMA and meant to help individuals affected by Hurricane Michael. It offers free mental health services for community members struggling with the mental toll of the hurricane aftermath. 

Mental health experts warn that trauma peaks seven to 10 months after a storm, putting Panama City currently in that range. 

As the storm rattled the walls of his house, Dossie realized that this storm would hit harder than the many that came before it. Slowly, the confident excitement he had in the calm moments before the storm hit turned into fear and panic as the severity of his situation became as clear as the reality that he had no choice but to stand pat.  

Dossie waited out the storm from inside the bathroom of his home as Michael reshaped the landscape outside. 

“Hurricane Michael came to me, literally knocking on my door, tearing my windows down,” Dossie said.

Then he remembered the pine tree looming above his home as it always had, but now, waiting to drop like a hammer at the unpredictable discretion of Category 5 wind speeds.

Dossie outlasted the storm, however, his property was less fortunate. 

It took 26 days for him to regain power, and the neighboring structures on his lot – including the house he grew up in, just feet away from the house he currently resides in – were severely damaged by the storm. 

“At that moment, I got all afraid and stuff like that, shaking because I realized I’m a house-and-a-half away from what could have possibly been my death,” Dossie said.

After Hurricane Michael, the roots beneath the pine tree slowly began to pull above the ground and brought a lean and wobble to the tree’s ordinarily upright posture. When the rain falls, the soil around its roots softens and the risk of it toppling through Dossie’s already damaged house increases. 

On top of the headache of coordinating the recovery of his home damaged by the storm, Dossie said he spends each night with an added fear that the timber will come crashing through what is left of his house while he sleeps.  

“I appear to cope, but I have my moments,” Dossie said. “When the wind’s blowing, I’m peeping out my window at that tree.” 

Inflated prices for tree removal services – one of several forms of price gouging reported by residents in the area – in addition to a lack of insurance and resources from FEMA combined to prevent Dossie from cutting down the tree threatening his home.

The mental toll that accompanied the long grind of recovery presented itself throughout Bay County in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael.

“We’ve had a lot of suicides,” Bay County Sheriff’s Office Financial Crimes Investigator Dennis Rozier said. “We’ve had a rise in suicides here which is pretty tragic in itself. Hasn’t been good.”

More than nine months later, Panama City is faced with an uncertain timeline and path towards full recovery. 

“You’re looking at a year or two from this point, probably,” said Trey Hutt, president of Hutt Insurance Agency in Panama City and a resource for locals navigating the recovery process. “Full recovery of the community might be three years, five years, 10 years. We really don’t know.”

The towering, unstable tree still teeters outside of Dossie’s home as he, and the rest of the city, endures the elongated recovery process post-Michael. 

“I look at it like I have a mental injury, not a mental illness,” Dossie said. “With an injury, just like if you injure your foot, you go to the doctor. You get your foot healed. And then you know you’re back at it again. So then I get my mental psyche healed and I’m back good to go.”

News 21 reporters Katie Hunger and Sarah Beth Guevara contributed to this report.

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Over 130 years later, a set of tracks runs on either side of a neighborhood and municipal buildings in low-lying south Dillon.

These two tracks, once a primary economic driver for the town, now serve as levees that trap water between them during floods, creating what many residents call a fish bowl. During Hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence last year, Dillon County’s emergency operations center was in this fish bowl.

An emergency operations center, or EOC, is activated during a disaster to serve as a central base for local officials to respond immediately and effectively to community needs.

“We had to go to manually operating the EOC, and that made the operation devastating,” said Moses Heyward, the Dillon County Emergency Management director, “That needs to change, because when you lose your brain of the EOC in radio communication, you have a problem.”

During Hurricane Florence, floodwaters from the Little Pee Dee River to the north and the Maple Swamp to the south flooded and shut down the Dillon County EOC along with the 911 call center, requiring emergency calls to be rerouted nearly 30 miles away to Florence, South Carolina. 

The calls would then be sent back to Dillon emergency responders through manual radios, making response time longer.

“It was like flying on a jet in a helicopter,” Heyward said.

Delayed response lasted for five days until a mobile 911 call center was installed in Dillon County.

Heyward has searched for grants to rebuild a new EOC on higher ground, but he has not found any grants that fund a project of that nature.

“They need to make a special provision to get Dillon County into a new EOC building relocated on higher ground,” Heyward said. “Without an EOC, 911 system, you are asking to get somebody hurt very bad if not possibly having casualties.”

Locally, funds to relocate the EOC are limited. The median household income in Dillon County is $30,866, and the poverty rate is nearly 30%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“You’re on a fixed income of what you’ve got in the tax base,” said Jarett Taylor, the town administrator in Latta, South Carolina. “You can’t really increase your taxes to a point where you can ever overcome something like this.”

South Dillon was not the only area of the town that flooded. The flooding was widespread in the city and the county, turning two other towns, Lake View and Latta, into islands.

“Downtown Dillon, every area and every storefront, was flooded in about three feet of water,” said Kenneth Smith, chairman of the Dillon County Long Term Recovery Group. “The whole downtown. It was like nothing you never seen.”

Flooding on the Little Pee Dee River in Dillon is a relatively modern phenomenon. The closest gauge for the river in nearby Horry County measured the crest at a record 17 feet during Matthew and Florence. The highest amount before Matthew was 16 feet in 1928. The river’s minimum flood stage is at 9 feet, according to the National Weather Service.

“I never expected flooding in Dillon County … but after 2016 and after 2018, we see that we can definitely have that happen in our area,” said Thesdia Bethea, assistant director at Dillon County Emergency Management.

Local funds are insufficient for Dillon County Emergency Management to respond to this recent onslaught of flooding, Heyward said.

“After a disaster … we pretty much have to request resources from the state, and it will make it so much easier for recovery efforts if we already have those resources in place,” Bethea said.

Officials in Dillon County don’t expect the flooding to stop any time soon.

“We’ve had two in the last three years. I don’t think it’s going to be a ‘if it ever happens again.’ It’s going to be ‘whenever it happens again,’” Taylor said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens this year.”

For Heyward, the priority is relocating Dillon County’s EOC to higher ground, so local officials can respond more effectively to future flooding.

“The bottom line,” he said. “They’ve got to get this EOC moved.”

The post The fish bowl in Dillon, S.C. appeared first on State of Emergency | News21.

“It was bedlam,” recalled Elfin Forest resident Nancy Reed. “Absolute bedlam.”

After being trapped in traffic during the 2014 Cocos Fire, Reed is among many looking to avoid previous evacuation woes. Reed, who scrambled to load her animals and connect her trailer to her car, was unable to evacuate due to traffic along the road. Other residents were unable to make multiple trips back to rescue all of their animals after mandatory evacuations began. 

Reed owns five horses, two dogs and two cats. She credits Jazzi, her 18-year-old competitive riding horse, with helping her through her husband’s death in 2006. 

“There is no way in hell I am leaving her with a fire,” she said. “No way in hell. You wouldn’t do that with your child. You would do whatever you had to do if it was your child.”

Wendy Said, a horse trainer in Harmony Grove, loaded her donkey and two horses in her 40-foot trailer the evening before the fire closed in. She waited two hours to pull out of her driveway and onto Country Club Road, a dead-end passageway that feeds onto the main road. 

“It’s a mess every single time,” Said lamented. “I’ve lived here for 33 years; it gets worse every time.”

Reed and Said are among two neighbors who conducted a census of horses in Elfin Forest Harmony Grove. Coordinating with local and state officials, Reed is working on plans for staging areas when the next disaster strikes. 

“We’ve got to do something better because you cannot let family members perish,” Reed said.

Elfin Forest and Harmony Grove are home to more than 500 horses, according to the neighborhood census, which also includes chickens, goats, and alpacas. When fires strike, residents are at the mercy of the unpredictable nature of the burn — as well as crowded traffic conditions that are exacerbated by cattle trailers and multiple trips required to evacuate pets. 

Residents fear future neighborhood developments may further complicate evacuation. The town council has sued San Diego County over two proposed developments — Valiano and Harmony Grove Village South — that, combined, would add more than 700 homes to the area. Council Chairman JP Theberge said the developments’ approvals violate a “good-faith promise” by the county that it would not approve more housing in the area.

Both of them surround Harmony Grove Village, a 700-home development approved in 2007. The site is estimated to be completed in 2020, according to the company website. Theberge said the new residents have become a part of the community; however, he’s unsure how a full neighborhood will factor into evacuation. 

“We’re still not clear on what’s going to happen when the next fire comes and we have 750 homes already built,” Theberge said. 

Said, whose property is near the site for Valiano, describes the proposed development a “tomb.”

“How would we, in the best case scenario, get our horse trailers onto Country Club Drive?” she asked. 

Said and Reed, both longtime residents of Elfin Forest Harmony Grove, attribute the success of Elfin Forest Harmony Grove, as well as the support they’ve received on forming protocol, to the shared culture of autonomy and ownership.

“This is a resilient community,” Reed said. “People take care of one another. They care about one another.”

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