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.

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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.”

Isaac Windes

Isaac Windes is a recent graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, with a major in journalism, a minor in political science and a certificate in international studies. Windes interned for the Arizona Capitol Times, covering water policy stories and reported from the Pentagon and White House as a reporter for Cronkite News in Washington, D.C. Windes also spent three years as a politics reporter for ASU’s student publication, The State Press,  breaking several extensive in-depth and investigative stories, as well as time reporting for the Arizona Capitol Times, Zócalo Public Square. His work can be found here.

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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.”

Miguel Octavio

Miguel Octavio is a recent graduate of the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities with a degree in journalism. He covered business and housing for UMN’s student-run newspaper, the Minnesota Daily, during his final semester. Octavio focused on broadcast journalism, interning at KARE 11 and WCCO-TV. He also earned a fellowship at CBS News, where he was part of the winning group in the 2018 intern project competition. More of Miguel’s work can be found here.

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The post In small S.C. towns, people struggle to stay after historic floods appeared first on State of Emergency | News21.

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.”

Ben Sessoms

Ben Sessoms is a recent graduate of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, where he double majored in journalism and communication studies. During his time at Appalachian State, Sessoms was the news editor of the student newspaper, The Appalachian, where he covered issues ranging from free speech restrictions on campus to student voting rights. Sessoms also interned at the local Boone newspaper, the Watauga Democrat. You can find his work here.

bensessoms.com

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“I am who I am today because of what I’ve gone through. I mean I’ve lost a son,  I’ve gone through Hurricane Katrina. I went through the [1964] Alaskan Earthquake,” Buffone said. “I know what it’s like to start over at 30, to start over at 60.”

 In 2005, it fell to the now-retired nurse to help rescue patients and pull them onto the roof of St. Rita’s Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana, where 35 trapped residents ultimately drowned in their beds and wheelchairs.

“They weren’t just patients they were family members … I mean it was such a tight knit family,” Buffone said. “We were all like a family, the people that worked in the kitchen, the nurse aides, everybody.” 

The water came in through the front doors of the building and pushed people out a window. Then there was silence, she said. 

“They told us that it was like the eye of the storm and then it was just pouring rain and you could hear people calling out for help.”

Even as the rain pounded patients and staff, she and others pulled people to the roof. 

“It stung so bad … and I thought if it burned that bad on me then I can imagine how it felt for other people, especially the older people,” Buffone said, adding that she started cutting mattresses so they could cover themselves.

“We saw people in the water that didn’t make it, we saw animals that didn’t make it … I mean things that you never thought you would see,” Buffone said. 

She moved to Michigan after the storm, but moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2009. Once there, she worried constantly about the possibility of another hurricane. She walked away from everything a second time. 

“I don’t think it will ever go away,” Buffone said

Katrina was not her first disaster. Buffone was 8 years old and living in Anchorage, Alaska, when she survived a 9.2 magnitude earthquake, the second largest in recorded history, lasting almost 4.5 minutes and leaving 139 dead. 

“My father told us to get out of the house, and I remember we didn’t have any shoes on so my father went back in to get us our slippers,” Buffone said. “For a child, it lasted forever.” 

She remembers her father shoving potatoes into pipes to prevent flooding. 

“I didn’t feel it was as devastating as being in Hurricane Katrina,” Buffone said.

Today, she is back in Flat Rock. 

“I don’t think it will ever go away,” Buffone said about her memories.“With the internet, I find myself going back and looking and seeing, and wondering what could have been done.

“The people and the culture and everything from Louisiana … I still have that and I’ll never get away from that,” Buffone said. 

Briana Castañón

Briana Castañón is a graduate student pursuing a degree in journalism at the University of North Texas. A native Texan, she has wanted to work in news since third grade. She interned at Denton Television, the city’s TV channel. She also reported for the campus television station, North Texas Daily TV. Her story about a local high school teacher who was an undocumented immigrant was nominated and won a Lone Star Emmy. She also has experience as a TV producer, editor and anchor. She studied and reported abroad in London the summer of 2018. View examples of her work here.

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The post One woman, two natural disasters appeared first on State of Emergency | News21.

But six days later, the interior of his home went up in smoke due to what is believed to be an electrical fire, related to the tornado. 

His neighborhood was without power for close to a week. When it was restored on June 2, Schumacher wasn’t home. He was about 20 minutes away at a church in Kettering.

“Your house is on fire,” a former neighbor’s ex-husband called and told him.

It happened quickly, Schumacher said. At 5:15 p.m. power was restored to the block. By 5:30 p.m. fire trucks were outside his house. 

He forgot to punch off the breaker, he said.

After a power outage, before electricity is restored, heat-generating appliances like a stove, refrigerator, iron or hair dryer that were on at the time power was lost should be disconnected, according to electrical experts. When power is restored these appliances will turn back on and create a fire hazard if left unattended. 

Beavercreek Fire Marshal Randy Grogean told a local television station that after a power outage, residents also should turn off the main breaker to the homes.

Schumacher said: “In those days, I didn’t think even think about it.”

Grogean has advice for other homeowners: “If you have damage to your house, have an electrician check it before you re-energize the house. If you don’t think there’s any damage, just be very cautious of turning your power back on.”

Only shards are left around the perimeter of the front windows of Schumacher’s home, the entire floor is now a blackened terrain covered in hills of his blackened belongings and ashen debris. 

He had to put his job at Lowe’s on hold to rebuild his home, which his family has owned since the early 1950s. He’s staying at a Red Roof Inn in the meantime and then couch surfing with friends until he is able to move into an apartment. 

Schumacher’s neighbors helped him clear out the bunches of fallen trees a week later and he installed a white screen door he got for between  $10 to $15 on extreme resale at Lowe’s.

Stacy Fernandez

Stacy Fernández is a recent graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University with dual degrees in magazine journalism and Latino-Latin American studies. She served as feature editor of The Daily Orange, Syracuse’s independent student newspaper. As an intern for The Buffalo News and The Dallas Morning News, she covered crime, developed enterprise stories, wrote longform features and waded through water to cover two flash floods and a double tornado. Fernández recently participated in NPR’s Next Generation Radio Project, a week-long “pop-up” digital journalism and audio training program. View her portfolio here.

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Lea is an experienced amateur radio operator but he was tempted not to respond to the call; he needed to work. But he answered the call anyway.

“When I got to the emergency operations center, they had nothing and they weren’t talking to anybody, because all their communications went down,” said Lea. “I realized that I needed to put the camera down and start helping out.”

About 30 hours after the storm made landfall, Lea ended up at a shelter in Wewahitchka whose 200 odd inhabitants hadn’t had any contact with the outside world since the storm hit. Cell service, landlines, internet, and radio towers were all knocked out. Lea stayed and helped relay messages for the shelter. The next day after he woke up, the shelter manager, Donn Minchew, grabbed him by the arm, stared him in the eyes and told him “if you go, we’re in a lot of trouble.” 

The storm hit on a Wednesday morning. It wasn’t until Sunday night that a Cell on Wheels was brought in nearby, providing the shelter’s residents with cell service. Until then, Lea and his personal ham radio was the only way they could talk to the outside world.

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 2009 to 2017, has been a long-time proponent of amateur radio during a disaster and after he retired from FEMA, he joined the Gainesville Amateur Radio Society in Florida. At a Federal Communications Commission forum in 2011 on earthquake communications preparedness, Fugate described amateur radio operators as “the ultimate backup, the originators of what we call social media.”

Later in the same forum, Fugate emphasized that Americans have gotten so reliant on modern communications technology that they never fathom they can fail. 

“They do. They have. They will,” Fugate said. “I think a strong Amateur Radio community [needs to be] plugged into these plans.”  

Within hours of responding to the EOC, Lea was asked to call for a helicopter to do a medical evacuation: a paramedic had a tonsillar abscess that was septic and the local hospital was out of commission. 

“Now he is alive and back at work,” said Lea. “And that was cool. That’s the only time in hundreds of hurricanes and disasters that I was actually able to see ham radio actually directly save a human life. I’m sure stuff that ham radio has done has been life-saving. But that’s the only time I’ve seen it directly responsible.” 

Amateur radio was integral to disaster response in the first days after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.

“For all intents and purposes, all communications infrastructure in Puerto Rico, was knocked out,” said Joe Bassett, of Clay County Florida, who was put in charge of the Amateur Radio Emergency Service for all of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. “There wasn’t a single cell tower in Puerto Rico that didn’t have some damage.” 

According to Bassett, amateur radio was the first to establish communications on 100% of the island.

“When everything else fails, it was amateur radio that could do it,” said Bassett, “And that was in large part because we were so nimble, and we could be into a location and as long as we had a radio wire and a generator, we could be set up and operating within half an hour.”

Basset said the role of amateur radio after a disaster has evolved, explaining we’re just beginning to utilize “hams” to the full extent of what they’re capable of. Hams used to relay a lot of health and safety messages like “your relative is alive and safe and will call when the phone lines work again.” Now, amateur radio operators provide much more tactical communication between first-responder organizations.

And the number of hams capable of responding to disasters is growing. According to the FCC, amateur radio licenses are at an all-time high, with over 700,000 licenses in the U.S.

Jordan Laird

Jordan Laird recently graduated summa cum laude from Hofstra University with a degree in journalism and political science. Her work has appeared in such professional publications as City & State New York, NY Metro Parents, Metrosource, and the Long Island Herald. She has received several awards for her reporting including two Press Club of Long Island awards and a Gracie award for radio reporting. Laird is a Cleveland native. View her work here.

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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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