National Disaster Relief delayed during COVID-19 pandemic

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, BCI Disaster Relief Directors Mike and Shari Carlson reached out to SEND Relief, the SBC disaster relief arm. Sam Porter, SEND Relief National Director, indicated that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nationwide they are emphasizing a “local teams” approach to disaster relief. The pandemic has made it difficult to coordinate assistance from out of state teams, especially considering the many states that have quarantine restrictions on travelers from Iowa. Fortunately, Missouri Disaster Relief has been able to rally a response to help clean up in Cedar Rapids, which is in the most damaged part of the state. With these delays from these outside resources, churches in unaffected areas of Iowa were called on to help the harder hit communities. We were encouraged by the many churches that were engaged in cleaning up in their community and others.

Iowa Disaster Relief response goes local

Marshalltown was another city that was hit pretty hard by the storm. There are three BCI pastors serving in Marshalltown: Pastor Israel Becerra is the pastor of Kairos Church, Pastor Matt Johnson is pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, and Pastor Steve Bensema is preparing to plant a church in Marshalltown.

Jason Laxton, pastor of First Family Church in Albia, brought a chainsaw and group of six from his church, mostly youth group students, up to Marshalltown to assist with the clean up. Pastor Laxton said, “I was shocked at the amount of destruction we saw in Marshalltown.” He connected with Pastor Bensema and spent the whole day cleaning up downed trees around several Marshalltown neighborhoods. “It was a great opportunity to be out in the community to serve and share the gospel through our words and actions.”

Missouri Disaster Relief Reaches Out in Cedar Rapids

The devastation in Cedar Rapids is much worse than others outside the area originally presumed. Chris Eller, BCI Executive Director spoke with Iowa Disaster Relief Director Mike Carlson about the damage they are seeing in central and eastern Iowa. “They drove highway 30 to Cedar Rapids and from Marshalltown on the crops are flattened. There’s a lot of tree damage and a lot of grain bins and outbuildings flattened. It goes on mile after mile, probably 80 miles of devastation. It looks much more like the widespread damage you see from a hurricane than the more localized damage typical of a tornado. In Cedar Rapids specifically, there’s a lot more roof damage than what we saw in Central Iowa. Because there’s no power and the temperatures are hot, there are people everywhere. In the poorer areas of town, it is clear a lot of people are living in yards and parking lots.”

Missouri Disaster Relief is now deploying to Cedar Rapids and will start by setting up a command center based out of Immanuel Baptist Church. As of Monday, 75% of Cedar Rapids is still without power, including Immanuel Church. The word on the street is that they are hoping to have power to the majority of the city by mid-week.

They are currently in a process of doing a full assessment before they can begin bringing in teams. The goal is to bring teams starting Tuesday, August 17th. There are four chainsaw teams plus chaplains on alert in Missouri, and Texas and Oklahoma have put a number of their teams on alert.

Ongoing Cleanup Efforts

We are grateful that, as far as we know, among BCI churches there were no injuries or church buildings that suffered severe damage. That being said, even a week later, there are still families dealing with damage from fallen trees and power outages. And some of our churches still have a lot of work to fully recover, especially in harder hit cities like those between Marshalltown and Cedar Rapids. If your church has an ongoing storm-related need, please contact us so we can coordinate resources to meet the need.

We pray that you all remain safe and that God will open doors for you to serve those in need in your community for the sake of the gospel.