Members of the disaster-early-response team at Perryville United Methodist Church got busy when they saw the need in flooded Louisiana.
Ida Rose, team leader, said the Perryville church is sending 100 cleaning buckets full of supplies to the area.
“It’s so awesome; we’re so proud,” she said.
Catastrophic flooding in parts of southern Louisiana in August killed more than a dozen people and damaged thousands of homes. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards called it “a historic, unprecedented, record-level flooding.”
Rose said churches, businesses and individuals in Perryville, Morrilton and Conway didn’t hesitate to contribute to the effort for the United Methodist Committee on Relief. Some big-box stores sold items at cost to the church; others made monetary donations, she said.
“It was amazing how many people were willing to donate,” she said. “One church gave $2,500.”
Each bucket is filled with about $55 worth of specific cleaning supplies, including dishwashing soap, work gloves, latex gloves, trash bags, clotheslines, clothes pins and air fresheners, as well as insect repellent.
Rose said she got excited when she found items for $1 at stores in Russellville and Conway.
“I’m a frugal shopper,” she said, laughing.
Rick Gartner of Conway, central district coordinator for the United Methodist Church Conference of Arkansas, said churches were asked to donate to the cleanup efforts in Louisiana or to the flood buckets, or to put together flood
buckets.
Gartner said his job is to help Methodist church members get trained for disasters and to recruit volunteers for disaster-relief teams of six to 10 members.
Volunteers will deliver the flood buckets to Louisiana, Gartner said. The buckets were taken to a warehouse in Conway to be stored. He said a church in Cabot and two in Pulaski County were the other churches that created flood buckets, but many others contributed financially.
Rose said churches donating included Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Perryville, the Perryville Assembly of God, Union Valley Baptist Church in Perryville, Adona Methodist Church and Peace Lutheran Church in Conway, as well as the Perryville United Methodist Women.
Rose, whose husband, Lester, is also on the disaster-response team, said no one from the Perryville church has been able to make a trip to Louisiana for various reasons.
“We love to do all this mission work,” she said.
Other members of the Perryville United Methodist Church disaster-response team are Les Smith, Jan Dugan, Arnie Jester, Melinda Collins and the Rev. Beth Perdue.
Byron Mann of Jasper, formerly of Conway, drove up to the warehouse with a moving truck Monday. He is volunteer and mission disaster-response coordinator for the Arkansas United Methodist Church Conference.
This week’s trip was his fifth to flooded Louisiana, he said, and he planned to take supplies, including some of the flood buckets, to Baton Rouge.
“At last count, there were over 1,000 homes that hadn’t been cleaned out,” he said.
Gartner said he had talked to a person about Denham Springs, Louisiana.
“He said, No. 1, pictures don’t do it justice of all the stuff they’ve taken out of houses and piled out on the road,” Gartner said.
Gartner said the person said every business in that city was flooded.
“The only place that wasn’t flooded was the Methodist church, and it was because it burned a few years back, and they built it back and raised it up a little bit — the water came within 3 inches of the door,” Gartner said.
Mann said people who helped create the flood buckets, or provided other emergency supplies, said they enjoy doing a hands-on project to help.
“They’re sending a piece of themselves in these buckets,” he said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.