Vancleave UMC is a major center for the Gulf Coast clean-up and is the command center for Robert Sharp, the UMVIM coordinator for Mississippi’s Seashore District, which includes the six southernmost counties that suffered the bulk of the state’s serious damage.  Sharp is working closely with Vancleave Pastor Larry Maugh who has turned every spare room in his church and Sunday School into a dormitory for volunteer workers.

          The Cal-Nevada Conference team arrived on Friday, Sept. 9 and immediately began work helping flood victims deal with the devastation suffered in what may be the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.  The local group worked out of the Vancleave Methodist Church which is located about eight miles north of the Gulf Coast.  They and other volunteers are concentrating their efforts on three of the hardest hit areas on the coast—Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula. 

            This could be a long time, according to Sharp.  With more than 100,000 families in heavily damaged or destroyed homes, he is predicting that the clean-up and reconstruction of homes could keep VIM teams busy for up to four years.  “There is no way to describe the extent of the destruction  or the number of homes that were damaged,” said Sharp.  Sharp is no stranger to hurricanes.  As a 32-year veteran of the Air Force’s ‘Hurricane Hunters’ he has flown into the eye of more than 400 Atlantic and Gulf storms. 

In order to make the homes habitable, the teams must spend more than a day in each home, removing all of the family’s furniture and possessions, pulling up the carpet or chipping up the flooring, and then removing most of the interior walls and insulation. Because of the danger posed by the mold, volunteers wear respirators or surgical masks (depending upon the degree of the mold's proliferation).   By the time volunteers finish with a house, they have created a 10-foot high mountain of furniture and waste in the front yard.  Tens of thousands of houses in the area have these enormous piles of debris piled at their curbside, awaiting removal by trucks that will be provided by FEMA

This process allows the house to dry out and arrests the spread of mold which begins to grow as soon as the flood waters recede.  After several weeks or more of drying, it is possible that families with the necessary resources will be able to start reconstruction—sheetrocking the walls, replacing molding, and laying new carpet.  Resources are the primary problem:  Sharp explains that less than 10 per cent of the families on the Gulf Coast were able to afford costly flood insurance.  In both the flood damage and reconstruction phase, Sharp is attempting to focus his district’s efforts on the elderly and poor families who have little ability to help themselves recover.

              Virtually every  Methodist Church in the Seashore District is involved to some degree in the recovery effort, even those that suffered substantial damage themselves.  For example Eastlawn UMC in Pascagoula was serving as a distribution point for food and clothing for many of the areas’s poorest families, long before it started to clean up its own sanctuary, Sunday school and social hall which were inundated with four feet of water and which eventually will need the same rehabilitation as the houses which are the target for work by the VIM teams.  Several UMC churches closer to the beach were not as lucky as Eastlawn and were virtually destroyed by the tidal surge that accompanied Katrina.  One of the biggest losses occurred in Biloxi where the Leggett Memorial UMC was completely gutted by the storm waters, along with a number of buildings that served as a conference and retreat center.

           The state’s overall effort is being coordination by Conference VIM Director Robert McCoy, pastor of the Baldwyn UMC.  He is hoping to see “between 90 and 150 VIM teams from all over the country” show up in the months to come.  But, according to McCoy, the need for help will extend well beyond a few months.  Once the clean-up is completed, it will take “years and years” of participation by VIM crews to help rehabilitate the damaged homes in the state.

           Vancleave Pastor Maugh is uncertain how long his church will be able to continue its current program of housing 15 to 45 volunteer workers a night, but he promises, “We’ll keep going as long as there is someone who needs our help.”  The Frazer church in Montgomery is underwriting many of the costs being borne by the small Vancleave Church, whose parishioners have been working dawn to dusk cooking meals, washing clothes and sheets, and providing the other help necessary to support the volunteer effort.  A major player is Maugh’s wife Celeste who coordinates most of the logistical arrangements such as scheduling incoming groups, arranging for cooks and cleaners, and ensuring that food, water and other supplies are on hand.

            Cal-Nevada VIM Director J.P.McGuire is hoping that California will be a major participant in the program.  He was able to help organize the arrival of the first group within a week after the disaster, but “we need to send many more.”  The first group included two conference pastors (Cheri Pierre of Willits UMC and Julie Horne of Durham and Chico Trinity).  They were joined by six other volunteers from Paradise (Jim Horne), Durham (Sylvia Thompson), Trinity (Chris Wenger), Willits (Gayle Holz), and Good Samaritan of Cupertino (Denise Austin and Peggy Land).   They stayed a week at the Vancleave Church and returned to Sacramento on Thursday, September 15. 

              As noted, this first group spent all five days dealing with flood damage at homes in the Pascagoula area.  This involved moving into a house and removing all of the moldings, carpeting, flooring, most of the walls and insulation.  Then other crews came into the homes to spray a bleach solution designed to arrest the growth of the mold.

         Other California groups will be formed in the months and year to come.  One of the first is being assembled by John McCormack of St. Mark's UMC in Sacramento, whose e-mail address is:  firetester@comcast.net.   Chico Trinity is hoping to send another team in the spring when the emphasis will be shifting to re-building the homes that were damaged or destroyed.  As a part of the effort, some UMC churches may choose to 'partner' themselves with one of the damaged churches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast or in southern Louisiana.

          “The situation here is beyond belief,” said Pastor Julie Horne.  “Virtually every home within a mile of the Gulf Coast has been made uninhabitable.  Some homes have been completely destroyed with nothing left but the studs in the walls, while others will need hundreds of hours of work to be made safe.  Then there are those homes, mainly in the poor areas, that were not in good shape before the flood, and which are now so heavily damaged that they are not worth repairing.”

          “Ironically,” said Pastor Horne, “most of the media attention has been focused on New Orleans, but the center of the hurricane actually hit and did most of the immediate damage all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  The scale of suffering here is beyond belief.”