Hurricane Helene Disaster Response

Hello Grace family, just a few days ago, our staff completed a two-day annual retreat in Ridgecrest, North Carolina, Buncombe County. Significant rainfall began we were all left the premise to travel a couple hours back home. But what we didn’t know at the time was that those raindrops were the start of the worst weather event in Western North Carolina’s recorded history.

The mountains along the North Carolina/Tennessee line took a beating of rainfall, up to 20” in places. Unlike some of the southern states which are more flat, the hills caused a funneling of the water to the valleys and towns below. Landslides and emergent flooding ensued leaving at the time of this recording over ____ dead in North Carolina alone, with hundreds still unaccounted for.

Rescue efforts have been into the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains on foot, by mule, and via private helicopters. FEMA landed it’s first C-19 at the Asheville airport on the last day of September.

Grace Covenant Church has been carefully and deliberately planning and processing our response over the last 4-5 days and has arrived at a three-tiered strategy.

First, our response will be targeted.

Collection facilities all over North Carolina have already sprung up to great effect. In an effort to reduce effort that is duplicative or unnecessary, we will be collecting only those items that we will be hand-delivering to a number of western North Carolina churches who a re serving as ad hoc distribution centers.

This means that we will not be accepting all items, all the time. We will accept items that are needed on a given day, a nd we will be personally delivering them in the following days.

For those eager to give monetarily, we have provided a drop-down link at gracecovenant.org, and we will continue to meet financial needs thru our Uncharted, one-fund initiative, which many of you are already participating in.

Second, our response will be fluid.

We may need baby wipes one week. We may need tarps or a chainsaw crew the next week. And we’ve created a webpage that will be regularly updated with the changing needs—monetary needs, physical needs, and when we need human beings.

We may, at times, have more opportunities than we have resources, in which case it’s all hands on deck. We may have more willing people than we do opportunities for mobilizing teams, in which case we encourage you to help Samaritan’s Purse, or one of many other organizations that are also currently mobilizing.

Go to gracecovenant.org/helene at any time to learn what we’re doing, but please remember that this is only a snapshot in time. And if you’d like for our information to be pushed into your inbox, enter your email on our Helene page to receive disaster relief-specific communications.

Last, our response will be for the long-term.

The impact of this disaster are going to last a lot longer than the presence of camera crews. We intend to be a long-term partner, here, in getting these communities back on their feet. Our financial support will evolve in the coming months. Our requests for your help is likely to be long-term.

Let’s not let our compassion wane. We are committed to putting down some things in our upcoming ministry plans in order to help our neighbors.

Thanks for listening, and buy a new pair of gloves or workboots. Let’s get ready to be the hands and feet of Jesus.