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Things Hurricane Andrew Could Not DestroyAwake!—1993 | January 8
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The Best and the Worst of Human Nature
Help began to pour into Florida from all over the country as different relief agencies got organized. The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn, New York, reacted at once and appointed a relief committee to function out of the Fort Lauderdale Assembly Hall. They also assigned a considerable sum of money for the purchase of materials, food, and emergency items. As a consequence, the Witnesses were among the first to react to the situation and began calling for volunteers. In fact, many came without being called.
Witness workers turned up from California, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington State, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and many other places. A Virginia Regional Building Committee that usually builds Kingdom Halls sent a group of 18 Witnesses to repair roofs. It took them 18 hours to drive down. Relief workers took vacation time or leaves of absence and drove across the country, hundreds and even thousands of miles, to reach their fellow Witnesses in distress.
Of invaluable aid was the group that came from the Charleston area in South Carolina. They had had experience with Hurricane Hugo back in 1989. They knew what to expect and soon organized relief supplies, including electric generators and building materials. Within two weeks volunteer crews had dried out some 800 homes and had repaired many roofs.
Many non-Witness spouses and neighbors benefited from the help offered by teams of Witness repairmen. Ron Clarke from West Homestead reported: “Unbelieving mates have really been impressed with all of this. They have been in tears, overwhelmed at what the Witnesses have already done for them.” About the unbelieving husband of one Witness, he added: “He is just ecstatic—Witnesses are over there now putting on his roof for him.”
Another Witness told of his non-Witness neighbors whom he checked on each night. They said they were OK. On the fifth day, the wife broke down and wept. “We don’t have any diapers for the baby. We’re low on baby food. We don’t have enough food and water.” The husband needed five gallons [20 L] of gasoline but could not get it anywhere. That same day, the Witness brought all they needed from the Kingdom Hall relief depot. The wife cried with gratitude. The husband gave a donation toward the relief work.
A critical role was played by the congregation elders and ministerial servants who worked together in organizing relief at the different restored Kingdom Halls in the disaster zone. They worked tirelessly to track down all the Witnesses and to check out their needs. In contrast, an Air Force officer was quoted as saying about the relief effort in another area: “All the chiefs just want to be chiefs, but nobody wants to get down and actually do the dirty work.”
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Things Hurricane Andrew Could Not DestroyAwake!—1993 | January 8
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“Don’t Sit Around and Mope”
What have Jehovah’s Witnesses learned from their experiences with natural disaster? Renew spiritual activities as soon as possible. Ed Rumsey, an overseer in Homestead, told Awake! that one double Kingdom Hall was ready for meetings on the Wednesday following the Monday hurricane. Some of the roofing had gone, the ceilings had collapsed, and water had entered. The volunteers worked quickly to get the Kingdom Halls back in shape for meetings and to use them as command stations from which to direct the relief work in their devastated area. Kitchens were set up so that meals could be served to the victims and the relief workers.
Fermín Pastrana, an elder from the Princeton Spanish Congregation, reported that seven families in his congregation of 80 Witnesses had lost their homes entirely. What remedy had he suggested to his fellow Witnesses? “Grieve if you need to grieve. But then don’t sit around and mope. Get active helping others, and, to the degree possible, go out in the ministry. Don’t miss our Christian meetings. Solve what can be solved, but don’t fret about what has no solution.” As a result, Witnesses were soon preaching and taking relief boxes from house to house. Andrew had not blown away their zeal.
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Things Hurricane Andrew Could Not DestroyAwake!—1993 | January 8
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How Is It Done?
The Anheuser Busch company donated a truckload of drinking water. On arriving, the driver asked officials where he should deliver the water. He was told that the only ones who had something organized were the Witnesses. In fact, within a week after Andrew struck, some 70 tractor-trailer loads of supplies had arrived at the Fort Lauderdale Assembly Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
A volunteer there reports: “So we received a whole truckload of drinking water. We immediately included this among the other foodstuffs that we were sending to the distribution centers at the Kingdom Halls. It was shared with the brothers and with the neighbors in that area who were in need.” A paper company in Washington State donated 250,000 paper plates.
In the beginning, city authorities were sending non-Witness volunteers to the Kingdom Halls, saying, ‘They are the only ones who are properly organized.’ Eventually the military moved in and began to set up food and water relief centers and tent cities.
The original Witness staging area was set up by the relief committee at the Fort Lauderdale Assembly Hall, which is some 40 miles [60 km] north of the main disaster zone around Homestead. To relieve some of the pressure, a primary staging area was established at the Plant City Assembly Hall near Orlando, about 250 miles [400 km] northwest of the disaster zone. Most relief materials were channeled there for sorting and packing. The committee ordered its needs from Plant City on a daily basis, and huge tractor-trailers were used to cover the five-hour drive down to Fort Lauderdale.
In turn this staging station supplied food, materials, water, generators, and other needs to three Kingdom Halls that had been repaired in the center of the disaster area. There, capable Witnesses organized building and clean-up crews to visit the hundreds of homes that needed attention. Kitchens and feeding lines were also opened on the Kingdom Hall grounds, and anybody was welcome to come for aid. Even some of the soldiers enjoyed a meal and were later observed dropping donations into the contribution boxes.
While the men were busy fixing houses, some of the women were preparing meals. Others were out visiting any people they could find in order to share with them the Bible’s explanation of natural disasters and also to give away boxes of relief supplies to those in need. One of these was Teresa Pereda. Her home was damaged, and her car windows were smashed—yet the car was loaded with relief boxes ready for her neighbors. Her husband, Lazaro, was busy working at one of the Kingdom Halls.—Ecclesiastes 9:11; Luke 21:11, 25.
For many of the homeless, alternative accommodations were found in the homes of Witnesses untouched by Andrew. Others stayed in trailers lent or donated for that purpose. Some moved into the tent cities established by the military. Others just wrote off their homes as a loss and moved in with friends and relatives in other parts of the country. They had neither homes nor jobs. There was no electricity, no water, no adequate sewerage—so they took the best way out for them.
One lesson all learned was well expressed by a Spanish-speaking Witness: “We are very thankful for the lesson that we learned about our goals in life. You know, you can work for 15 or 20 years building up your home, accumulating material things, and then in just one hour, it can all be gone. This helps us to identify our goals spiritually, to make life simpler and really think about serving Jehovah.”
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