Expanded after Hurricane Opal, ‘a lot of lives were saved’ thanks to this church’s basement
All that many area residents unaffected by Sunday’s deadly storms wanted to do afterward was give.
They wanted to donate anything they could — to pack it up, put in the car, drive it over and drop it off.
But that can be more difficult than it sounds: Most relief agencies prefer that donations be money, not goods, because handling supplies is a labor-intensive challenge that requires collection, storage and distribution.
It is a challenge to which Beauregard’s Providence Baptist Church rose, after a tornado killed 23 and wrecked homes Sunday in the rural Lee County, Ala., community.
On Tuesday afternoon, an addition across the street from the main church at 2807 Lee County Road 166 was filling up with supplies that people had donated. Dozens of volunteers were sorting through it, assembling the goods needed for distribution.
What Providence calls its West Campus became a center not only for collecting and distributing those supplies, but for coordinating volunteers, and a rallying point for other faith-based organizations coming into Lee County from elsewhere.
Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief was there, and representatives from Franklin Graham’s group Samaritan’s Purse, and from the American Red Cross, and from the Disabled American Veterans.
Local volunteers were outside cooking food and serving it to all the other volunteers from elsewhere. The sanctuary was open to anyone who needed solace. Chaplains were available for counseling.
“They’re from all over the community,” Dr. Rusty Sowell, the pastor there for the past 35 years, said of those gathering there.
He said the supply center needed no more clothing and water, Tuesday, but it still was collecting other goods.
Across the street, the main church or East Campus served Tuesday as a shelter for those left homeless.
On Sunday, its basement was open to those seeking shelter from the storm.
When the EF-4 tornado’s 170 mph winds tore through the rural town Sunday afternoon, 80 to 100 people had taken shelter in that basement, Sowell said.
“I believe a lot of lives were saved because of that,” he added, recalling an older woman who decided to go there as the warnings came out, and went home to find she had no home: It had been destroyed.
“We’ve never experienced a disaster like this in our community,” Sowell said.
As a congregation, the church has been around since 1884, he said, but its newer construction, the facilities that enable it to fill these current needs, were built partly with a disaster in mind: It followed the impact of Hurricane Opal, which came up from the Gulf of Mexico through central Alabama in October 1995, and left widespread destruction in its wake.
The church remains open 24 hours a day, during this relief effort, the pastor said. It’s online at www.providencealive.com, and the phone number is 334-745-4608.
This story was originally published March 5, 2019 at 8:02 PM.