Hurricane Matthew struck the east coast of the U.S. and UMCOR is on the scene assisting with clean-up.
JESSICA BRODIE
South Carolina UM Advocate
Two days after Hurricane Matthew pummeled South Carolina, United Methodist disaster leaders are rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. Their first order of business: assessment and early response.
Six of the 12 districts in the South Carolina Conference of The United Methodist Church have seen damage from the storm, several of those with massive flooding, and the conference has opened up its disaster response hotline to begin helping people in need.
“We know we have a lot of work to do,” said Matt Brodie, conference disaster response coordinator. “In terms of a recovery effort, it’s very similar to what we had with the flood except it’s more concentrated—instead of most of the state, it’s mainly I-95 to the coast.”
Brodie said it’s not just the coastal districts that have seen damage, though certainly they took the brunt. Some parts of Hilton Head Island are literally gone, he said, and parts of Charleston and Myrtle Beach were devastated. But many inland areas were hard hit, as well. South Carolina United Methodist Volunteers in Mission Early Response Teams have already begun work where able, and trucks of United Methodist Committee on Relief cleaning buckets and health kits are being distributed in affected areas.
The conference has applied for an UMCOR grant to help with the recovery effort. “We are up and running and actively looking for unmet needs in the community,” Brodie said, noting that even if the UMC teams cannot help directly, they can put people in touch with groups that can.
The hurricane’s northern eyewall struck Hilton Head Island as a Category 2 storm very early Saturday, Oct. 8, and continued north, weakening to a Category 1 and making landfall in McClellanville, a small town between Charleston and Myrtle Beach. Flooding from the storm-surge soon followed, with whole neighborhoods swamped, piers demolished, trees uprooted and, in Charleston, waist-level flooding in some parts. Hurricane Matthew was a Category 4 storm when it slammed Haiti Oct. 4, killing nearly 900 people and then moving onto Florida, where it claimed the lives of at least six more people before moving north. At least 21 people died in the United States as a result of the storm, including three in South Carolina.
Last Updated on October 11, 2016