Church volunteers flock to Cobb to help with clean-up

By Christopher Quinn

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Morning church services took on new meaning in Cobb County Sunday.

Volunteers from local churches and some from other states showed up to help hundreds of families affected by last week’s flood as the sun finally showed up to begin drying things out.

“They’ve been coming out of the woodwork,” said Karen Hurst who lives on Glory Drive in Austell.

“I don’t know what I would have done without them. We don’t have any family here,” she said.

Along hard-hit Clay Road, the cars of hundreds of volunteers packed cul-de-sacs and crowded road-side parking. Workers tore out rotting and wet drywall, shoveled up sopping, yellow fiberglass insulation and carried ruined furniture to huge debris bins that dotted the lawns. Volunteers brought food, water and shoulders to lean on.

“You know where I would be if not for them?” Hurst asked. “I would be sitting right here in this garage crying.”

Less than half a mile away, members of Clay Road Baptist Church were looking over their property.

For the second time in four years, the Cobb congregation’s building and fellowship hall were immersed in the overflowing waters of Sweetwater Creek.

Last time, Hurricane Dennis dumped rain on the area until the water rose to window level. The members renovated the building. This time, the flood reached the base of the white steeple and moved the fellowship hall sideways off its foundation.

“It’s just heartbreaking,” said member David Stancil as members gathered in the fellowship hall of nearby Bethany Baptist Church in Powder Springs to hold service.

Deacon Jake Tatum said of the church’s 50-75 active members, “We will survive it. That’s the main thing. We are just trying to keep the people together. The church is not actually the building. It’s us.”

The Rev. Jason Berryhill thinks the congregation will have to look for a new location. The building has been declared a total loss.

On Sunday, he urged members to let God move in their lives as they go forward.

Members of Baptists, Methodists, Mormon and Lutheran churches from the region and others states were in the flooded neighborhoods.

Samaritan’s Purse, the North Carolina relief agency run by Franklin Graham, the son of the Rev. Billy Graham, sent seasoned disaster volunteers and drove in trailers of supplies.

Hundreds of local volunteers showed up on Saturday, and the Samaritan teams based at Westridge Church in Dallas and First Baptist in Woodstock. And more were expected to come.

Team leader Brian Smith, a volunteer from Florida, said he took 12 workers to a house of a man five weeks removed from heart surgery Saturday.

“When we showed up, he was out digging a ditch to deflect the water,” Smith said.

Dan Bennett from Florida said there is something special about helping people in such immediate need.

“I never get worn out doing this kind of work,” he said.

He led a team into Hurst’s home to begin tearing out sopping carpets and drywall. They will scrub mold killer into the wooden studs and wait for it dry so the house can be renovated, just like the teams he helped lead four years ago after Hurricane Katrina.