By Brad Highland
Carbondale, IL – Area churches are transitioning from helping fight back flood waters to cleaning up after them.
The Clear Creek Baptist Association is collecting items such as cleaning supplies and non-perishable food to give to flood victims. The group is also looking to borrow equipment such as dehumidifiers and generators.
Association director Roger Ferrell says the group works with over 50 churches from Carbondale to Cairo to meet the needs of flood victims.
"It changes every week because of the situation," says Ferrell. "This week the water's starting to go down, and so we're starting to mud-out houses."
Ferrell says, as a number of Cairo residents evacuated to Anna, local churches brought them home-cooked meals.
He says the local churches have also done a lot to keep kids entertained.
"Just coming up there and playing games with children, trying to keep them occupied," says Ferrell. "We had one church that had some inflatables at their building and took a whole bunch of kids from the shelter at Shawnee over to their building just to play for a couple hours just because there's not much to do in those shelters for kids, and that gave their parents a little break."
The Baptist Association is collecting donations of cleaning supplies and nonperishable food items to help flood victims. Donations can be dropped off at the Association's office in Anna and the Baptist Collegiate Ministries in Carbondale.
The Association will hold a training session for anyone interested in learning how to mud-out a flood-stricken house or business.
The session will be held at 6:00 P.M. Thursday, May 19, at the Clear Creek Baptist Association's office in Anna. There will be another training session Saturday in Metropolis.
For more information on donating or how to help with the Association's relief efforts, call 618-833-4481.
