During Labor Day weekend, more than 1,700 volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from nine stakes in Florida and Alabama helped clean up after Hurricane Idalia — the first weekend of what will be several cleanup efforts to come.
Making landfall on Wednesday, Aug. 30, the storm hit Florida’s Big Bend area on the Gulf Coast — flooding streets, felling trees, ripping off roofs and cutting power. Damage is estimated to be around $9 billion in property loss.
John and Pam Horton had evacuated ahead of the storm. But when they returned to coastal Suwannee, Florida, which is about 130 miles, or 209 km, southeast of Tallahassee and on the southern end of the Big Bend region, they saw most of their possessions were covered in mud.
The Hortons were overwhelmed by what they found. “We just didn’t know how we were going to do this by ourselves,” John Horton said in a report on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Latter-day Saint volunteers from Gainesville, Florida, about 65 miles, or 105 km, east of Suwannee, quickly got to work, removing water-logged furniture and mucking out mud and debris from the home.
Norman L. Beatty, the first counselor in the Gainesville 2nd Ward bishopric, who was there with his family, climbed on the roof to cut down a tree that had fallen during the storm.
Beatty said he serves because it is what the Savior would do. “This is my community, and these are my brothers and sisters, and I love them,” he said.
In Fanning Springs, Florida, about 28 miles, or 45 km, northeast of Suwannee, a group of full-time missionaries helped members of the Chiefland Ward remove a large, fallen tree on Brad and Lanette Six’s property.
Brad Six expressed his family’s gratitude for the help. ”The way you show people you love them is through helping, through serving,” he said.
Elder Landon Berning, from Kaysville, Utah, serving in the Florida Jacksonville Mission, helped remove the tree.
“I really like doing service like this. It’s all volunteer work, and it’s all for Jesus Christ and for your neighbor. It’s the two great commandments,” he said.
Command centers coordinate hurricane cleanup
Command centers were set up in Church meetinghouses in Lake City and Madison, in northern Florida; Chiefland, between Gainsville and Suwanne, Florida; and Valdosta, Georgia. There volunteers coordinated the relief efforts, by unloading semitrailers loaded with relief supplies, completing work orders and taking crisis cleanup calls from around the community.
Elder M. Andrew Galt, an Area Seventy in Florida, said when Hurricane Idalia hit, Church members were ready to respond because they have a long history of preparing for natural disasters.
“The members here in the South know that hurricane response is part of what we do,” Elder Galt said. “All year long we are training the stakes to run command centers, we are training them to prepare for storms.”
And they know they must look ahead.
“This is an early storm,” he said. “We could very likely have another one. We’re planning on another one. We just don’t know where and when yet.”
Among the dozens assigned to staff the command center in Chiefland was Tiffanie Buchman. She helped coordinate requests from the community for help.
The work done by volunteers is physically demanding, she said: “They muck out houses, they cut down the trees, they pick up the debris.”
Their goal is to show love and give people hope.
Labor Day weekend, Sept. 1-4, was just the first coordinated cleanup effort in Big Bend. Relief efforts by the Church are expected to continue in the community over the next month. More than 2,500 Latter-day Saint volunteers from 26 stakes from around the area are expected to return the weekend of Sept. 15-17.
Hurricane Idalia cleanup numbers, so far
- Landfall on Aug. 30
- Estimated $9 billion in damage
- Church meetinghouses in six cities sustained damaged
From Sept. 1-4:
- Nine stakes
- 1,734 volunteers
- Three semitrailers from the Church with relief supplies
- 759 work orders
- 2,457 crisis cleanup calls
- 28,772 hours of service
Expected later in September:
- 26 stakes
- 2,500 volunteers
