A week after Hurricane Ivan came ashore between Mobile, Ala., and Pensacola, Fla., many Pensacola Bay area residents were just beginning to assess the severity of the storm’s impact. Major roads and bridges remained impassible, schools were shuttered, and area residents learned electrical power and gas service would not be fully restored until Oct. 6, three weeks after the storm’s arrival.

Insurance industry experts estimate that the triple-whammy of hurricanes Ivan, Frances, and Charley, which devastated many parts of the Caribbean, produced between $13 billion and $15 billion in damage in the United States alone. Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) is providing emergency assistance to families devastated by the storms, which damaged tens of thousands of homes, businesses, and other structures, and whose remnants caused severe flooding in the southeast and eastern United States. Episcopal parishes have suffered, survived, and served their communities throughout these crises.

At press time, land phone lines remained down throughout much of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast and damage assessments were still in the initial stages. The Rev. Russell Levenson, Jr., rector of Christ Church, Pensacola, reported that the diocesan office in Pensacola had been destroyed by flooding in the storm’s wake. Fr. Levenson said his parish of more than 2,600 members suffered no loss of life from the storm but “the church took a big hit when the bell atop the roof fell through the ceiling, attic, and finally the floor of the nave into the basement.”

Four days after Ivan made landfall, power was restored at Christ Church in time for two Sunday services that were held in a large meeting room. Fr. Levenson gave parishioners “permission slips” to grieve for their losses but he also urged them to look to the future in hopefulness.

“Maybe you lost the trees but not the house,” he told the congregation. “Maybe you lost the house but not the stuff in it. Maybe you lost everything, but you’re still here.”

The service ended with parishioners leaving their seats to form a circle and hold hands for the final blessing. While some parish activities have been put on hold as the community struggled to “regain its balance,” Fr. Levenson said weekday and Sunday Eucharists would continue as scheduled.

Although many preparations were made to bear the full brunt of Hurricane Ivan’s force, the Diocese of Mississippi was spared a hard hit on the Gulf Coast. The worst concentration of damage was in the Meridian area, where Church of the Mediator and St. Paul’s were dealing with numerous downed trees, some on the homes of clergy and church employees.

St. John’s, Laurel, suffered from a fatality as a parish member was killed by a falling tree as he went to check on damage to his business after the storm’s passage.

As more than one million people from the New Orleans and Mobile areas of the Gulf Coast surged north in hopes of avoiding Ivan, churches and facilities in the diocese prepared to provide traditional Mississippi hospitality for displaced people. Churches from McComb in south central Mississippi across to historic Natchez, north to Greenwood and west to Vicksburg responded to calls for help and set up spaces to serve as feeding sites, shelters and community information centers.

The Duncan M. Gray Camp and Conference Center, near Canton, received 30 displaced conference participants when an event scheduled at the Solomon Episcopal Conference Center in southeast Louisiana was cancelled after mandatory evacuations. The Big House at Gray Center also received special visitors. The students of Wilmer Hall, a residential school in Mobile, were evacuated from their facility and came to Gray Center as part of a long-standing arrangement for use of the facility in times of urgent need.

“Incredibly, as each new demand for refugee space came in, another scheduled client cancelled their reservation,” said Bill Horne, Gray Center’s executive director. In all, the center welcomed more than 250 Ivan refugees and relief support personnel.

“This is my first hurricane,” said the Rev. Edward O’Connor, rector of St. Peter’s by-the-Sea, Gulfport. “As I gathered together important things and holy things—the parish register, the key to the ambry, my vestments, the insurance file—I also stopped and took our mission statement off the wall. To me, the mission statement is most important; we are a people of joy, as found in our baptismal covenant, because we come to build and rebuild one another in Christ.”

Cities and towns of West Virginia were hard hit by Hurricane Ivan’s floodwaters, but the churches stood high and dry.

The Rev. James Reed, vicar of St. Matthew’s, Wheeling, is responsible for four churches in the diocese’s northern cluster. “We got everybody out of the flood zone,” he said. “We were really fortunate.” But even though church buildings were untouched, many parishioners lost everything.

Fr. Reed said of St. Matthew’s water rose to within a block, and he noted that Christ Church, Wellsburg, was closed because even though the church is located on a rise, “it had to shut down because the streets around it were closed.”

The Ven. Faith Perrizo, archdeacon of the diocese, said Grace Church in St. Marys lost two-thirds of its back yard. “The back end of the parish office building was 30 feet from a 30-foot drop into the creek,” she said. “They lost 20 feet, so now they’re 10 feet from the drop-off, and there is a fissure behind the church that could slide. FEMA said it was OK to use the building, though. They have an Alpha course beginning tomorrow.”

By the time Ivan reached the 14 eastern and northeastern Pennsylvania counties of the Diocese of Bethlehem, its wind had decreased but heavy rains flooded several rivers and streams and submerged the undercroft and nearly a foot of the main floor of St. Peter’s, Tunkhannock, north of Scranton.

Three routes leading to the church were closed, with water covering two area bridges, so the Rev. Cynthia Guthkelch was unable to get near the church on Sept. 18. She assumed from pictures transmitted from a local TV station’s helicopter that the church building was a total loss.

But two parishioners were able to reach the church the following day and found that the flood waters “reached six inches into the main floor. Obviously mud is everywhere. But the hymnals, prayer books, and most altar furnishings appear to have escaped the waters. We were comforted that the sanctuary light continued to burn, providing the only illumination.”

When Bishop Paul Marshall of Bethlehem arrived at the church early that afternoon, he found four pumps running and the nave had been drained. The basement, which includes the parish hall, kitchen and the rooms used for the weekday preschool, was entirely under water.

“It is not clear whether the building can be salvaged,” Bishop Marshall said. “The water had a large sewage content, plus petroleum products, so there is a bio- as well as a chemical hazard. Because water was on both sides of the nave floor, vestry members expect that the building will have to be gutted and essentially rebuilt.

“The best news was the vestry meeting,” the bishop continued. “This was my first flood, and I did not know what to expect. The vestry was serious, focused, and did what they needed to do. We reflected for a few moments on the collect for today, which reminds us not to confuse what is eternal with what is temporal. The rector and vestry were focused on doing what would make their parish the most effective community of disciples. It was a very encouraging moment.”

In the Diocese of Western North Carolina, which was celebrating the consecration of the Rev. G. Porter Taylor as its sixth bishop [see p. 10], little damage was reported at churches. But the same was not true for the houses of some parishioners, including those of two families at St. Andrew’s, Canton. Weakened by Hurricane Frances less than two weeks earlier, the houses were expected to be condemned after Ivan’s floods “dumped a second load of mud on them,” said the Rev. Canon Jane Smith, canon to the ordinary.

Another family, from St. Gabriel’s, Rutherfordton, lost their house in a fire that began when floodwaters caused a short in the fuse box. Churches have assisted the families through discretionary and other funds and ERD sent a $5,000 gift that will assist the families, as well as a parish school that lost its supplies.

Lauren Auttonberry, Bill Lewellis, the Rev. Elizabeth Walker, the Episcopal News Service and TLC staff members contributed to this report.

(From The Living Church, Oct. 10, 2004)