IRC Responds to Needs After Hurricane Laura

Every time I approach a disaster zone that a hurricane has been through, I am always shocked at the difference in damage from one storm to the next.  Of course, I arrived after Laura in Lake Charles at night and did not see the damage until the next morning. I drove a few blocks around the area that I was staying and noticed all the trees that had been forced into people’s houses.  I talked to a sweet single mom name Nichole who had just finished remodeling her house and a tree was laying right in the middle of the house.  I went a few blocks over from there and met a guy named Frank who had served in the Navy.   He sent his family away to keep them safe, but he decided to stay at home as the storm intensified.  As he walked around nervously in his home, he told me that he could feel the house being lifted up, foundation and all about 4 to 5 inches and then being sat back down by the storm.  He didn’t know what to do so he grabbed his Bible, crouched himself down in a hallway closet clutching his Bible and praying that God will spare his home.  Frank told me that this happened four or five times before it stopped.  Frank had lots of trees down in his yard and so did everyone else.  My first trip to Lake Charles was to establish how many houses had trees on them so that we could assemble some very large teams to go down and clear as many trees off homes as possible in a short period of time.  We are working out of the Enterprise Church of Christ, partnering with Churches of Christ Disaster Response Teams and they are able to keep up to 60 people there at a time.  We cut some big trees while we were there and pulled a bunch of cut up branches to the streets so they could be taken to the dump.

We will be making mini trips to Lake Charles, so if you would like to join us and helping people there please contact me Tim Hines at 985-231-8540.

Tim  Hines

If you would like to donate to the efforts, you can either mail a check to the address below or click here.

IRC

P.O. Box 4214

Covington, LA 70434-4214