Surviving Hurricane Charley

On Friday, August 13, 2004, Hurricane Charley roared through central Florida with winds in excess of 120 miles per hour. Native Floridians and newcomers alike watched in awe and fear as the powerful storm uprooted ancient trees, ripped roofs from homes, snapped power lines, and scattered debris along its path. Prior to the storm, I was among the crowds who thronged to grocery and hardware stores, stocking up on candles, batteries, and non-perishable food. By late afternoon on Friday, law enforcement agencies advised everyone to be off the roads. Once I was safe at home I settled down, like thousands of other Floridians, to watch updates of the storm’s progress on the television. Dusk came early that day, as sunset was swallowed up by encroaching bands of clouds. I looked anxiously out the window at the twilight silhouettes of the many trees surrounding the parsonage and the church, caught in a macabre dance to the tune of advance gusts of wind.

I sat in front of the television, watching in a kind of detached fascination. I held a map on my lap and a pen, ready to mark the next announced location of the storm. Charley came ashore in Port Charlotte at 3:45 pm, and I thought about Brother Burke Johnson, whose home was only 30 miles north of the storm’s center. Charley took nearly six hours on a north-easterly course before it reached Orlando, home of Rolling Hills Moravian Church. The lights went out at 9:30 pm. Since there was nothing else to do, I went to bed, but sleep did not come easily. As the wind and rain pounded outside, I thought of my congregation members, and prayed for their safety. Phone lines were out, and we had been cautioned earlier not to use our cell phones, except in an emergency. The operator from the fire alarm monitoring system kept calling from Chicago to tell me that there had been an interruption in service. I explained to her that we were having a hurricane here, and that service would likely be interrupted for more than just a few minutes.

Sometime during the early morning hours, I awoke to an eerie silence. There was no traffic noise, no wind, and no rain. I stepped across the parking lot to check on the church, and looked up to a clear, deep indigo sky with brilliant stars that suffered no competition from city lights. Having determined that the church and the parsonage had survived, I returned to bed, where I slept until morning’s bright sunshine streamed in my window.

Rolling Hills church was blessed, in that we received no major damage, and our congregation sustained no injuries and no loss of life. In this respect, we fared better than many of our neighbors. Charley was capricious — leaving one neighborhood with only a few scattered tree limbs to deal with, while half a mile away once-towering oaks and pines sprawled across rooftops and crushed automobiles. The area was universally without electricity. Emergency power crews came from all over the country to help local workers, who labored around the clock to restore electricity. Two weeks after the hurricane, some residents remained in the dark.

Our first concern after the hurricane was to check on congregation members. In ordinary times this would have been as simple as picking up the phone, or even driving to the affected neighborhoods. However, land-line phone service was not available for many of us for the first few days, and cellular service was very patchy due to heavy traffic. Furthermore, we were cautioned by emergency workers not to attempt driving on side streets that were choked by debris and fallen utility wires. Those of us who were able to make telephone contact for a few minutes at a time attempted to learn how other congregation members had fared during the storm. Even so, there were some members who we could not reach for several days. We were very frustrated by our inability to determine the safety of our brothers and sisters, much less to discern immediate needs and coordinate efforts to help.

Even so, the storm brought out qualities of generosity, patience, and human concern — not just in our congregation, but in many area residents who suddenly found themselves in a position to help their neighbors. There were offers of ice (a precious commodity) lodging, and meals. A Rolling Hills family cooked their meals in the church kitchen as soon as power was restored, and invited anyone who needed a hot supper to join them. The nights purred with the comforting hum of generators. Many neighbors who had purchased generators shared power time with others in the community — in an effort to preserve frozen food.

In the wake of Charley, and in awareness of the potential for future disasters, the Rolling Hills Joint Board discussed our successes and our failures in giving emergency aid. We determined that communication is a key element for an effective ministry of care for our congregation. We need to be aware of any members who are sick or elderly, who live alone or are otherwise less able to cope with loss of power or shelter. If we have advance warning (as we did with Charley) we need to be sure that all of our members have access to life-sustaining necessities such as food, fresh water, medicine, and shelter.

Power was restored to the Rolling Hills sanctuary at 10:35 am on Sunday, August 15 (just as we began the opening liturgy for our August 13th celebration of Holy Communion.) The lights came on, the air conditioners hummed, and the congregation responded with a resounding “Hallelujah!” Those of us who were able to attend that morning came rumpled and scantily washed, with an attitude of humility and praise. The congregation seemed like soldiers who have survived a battle — fatigued and stunned but glad to be alive.

The scars that we suffered as a congregation are not spectacular, or even immediately obvious. There were those who are living on fixed or minimum wages who lost all the food that they needed for their families. There were those who depend on contact with their church family for spiritual and emotional support, who found themselves temporarily isolated. And there were those who coped outwardly with the necessities of hurricane survival, but who show the signs of stress in ragged emotions, nightmares, edgy nerves, anxiety, and loss of confidence. It is for these “walking wounded,” as well as for all those who suffered more extensive physical damage that we request your continued prayers. We are on the mend. It is a slow process but we are confident that the powerful God of wind and rain still cradles us in loving and healing hands.