With a busy Atlantic hurricane season predicted and tragedies already being reported in the South, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is encouraging churches to make disaster preparedness plans.
Hurricane Delta clobbered southwest Louisiana on Oct. 9, making landfall just 13 miles east of where Hurricane Laura came ashore as a strong Category 4 storm just six weeks earlier. And, between these two direct hits, Hurricane Sally, a Category 2 storm with 105 mile-per-hour winds, dumped double-digit rainfall totals from Gulf Shores, Alabama, to Pensacola, Florida. Small, slow-moving Tropical Storm Beta caused severe flooding along the Texas and Louisiana coastlines.
A few days before Hurricane Laura made landfall as a category 4 storm in the early hours of Aug. 27, Marie Nelson, associate director of Gilmont Camp and Conference Center in Gilmer, Texas, reached out via email to the administrators of the nonprofit Evergreen Life Services, a community for adults of differing intellectual and developmental abilities in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She wanted to make sure they knew residents and staff from Evergreen would be welcome to shelter at the camp if needed, just as they had done briefly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina dealt a historic blow to New Orleans, Hurricane Rita churned up to Category 5 in the Gulf of Mexico and threatened to deliver a second punch to the Crescent City.
