Mary Harrison, Campus Carrier sports editor
After floods swept through neighboring Chattooga County earlier this month, Berry was officially involved in the immediate response to a local disaster for the second time in twenty years. Staff and students also personally involved themselves through manpower and donations.
The city of Summerville and parts of Chattooga County, to the north of Rome, experienced flash floods Labor Day weekend, when an unexpected rainstorm dumped over a foot of rain within three days.
Beginning late on Saturday, Sept. 3 and continuing into Sunday, Sept. 4, the deluge was more than the ground could absorb and caused local creeks and storm drains to overflow until they could empty into the Chattooga River, according to Eddie Elsberry, Berry’s director of agricultural operations and chairman of the Chattooga County School District board of education.
Authorities from the City of Summerville said the flooding was considered a once in 200-year event, Elsberry said.
In addition to submerging houses and filling businesses in downtown Summerville with around two feet of water, the flash floods shut down Summerville’s water treatment plants, leaving customers in the city and parts of the county without running water for almost a week, until Friday, Sept. 9. A boil advisory remained in effect until the following Wednesday.
Berry College Volunteer Services (BCVS) sent 12 students to help with relief efforts at North Summerville Baptist Church (NSBC) for the organization’s 9/11 Day of Service, held on Saturday, Sept. 10.
While BCVS has previously participated in donation drives for hurricane relief, this is one of a handful of in-person disaster relief responses organized by BCVS in the past 20 years, and only the second to respond to a local disaster.
Montana Barber, senior and current BCVS student director, led the group, which gave local volunteers at NSBC a respite by packing buckets of cleaning supplies, sorting through donations of water and loading cars with donations.
“It’s important to have these [responses] that are nearby because we can actually be there, be hands on and see the work that we are doing is effective,” Barber said. “It’s also important to consider greater causes that are farther away, but that may not be as blatantly impactful for our volunteers.”
Although she herself has never been affected by a natural disaster, Barber has personally helped with previous disaster relief efforts. The senior, who is from northwest Georgia, said helping in-person reinforced the fact that shortages of a basic need like water could happen to anybody, while many organizations with which BCVS partners only service specific demographics.
“While it may have been worse for some people living in less ideal housing, in terms of the water shortage, everyone was out of water,” Barber reflected. “For someone like me, who’s from this area, it does feel a little more intimate and I can see the needs probably different than they can.”
The Rev. Sammy Barrett, pastor of North Summerville Baptist Church, said his volunteers had been working all day since Sunday morning, Sept. 3, to hand out bottled water, cleaning supplies, clothing and snacks to Chattooga residents who came through the church’s impromptu, parking lot distribution site. The pastor reported being the first person to arrive at 7:30 a.m. each day and the last to leave at 11 p.m. throughout the week following the flooding.
The church received semitrucks full of donations and volunteers both locally and from multiple states, many of them elderly. Berry was the first college to send a group of students to help at NSBC, according to Barrett.
“It gave our people a break because [they] have worked so many hours,” the pastor said on Saturday, Sept. 10. “[Students] being here has really taken the pressure off and given them a much-needed rest. We really appreciate [BCVS] being here.”
BCVS did not take any additional groups to the church, due to the immediacy and temporariness of the volunteer need, but Barber said those interested in still helping can talk with organization’s existing community partners, like Habitat for Humanity, about ways to help with long-term recovery in the area.
Long-term recovery in Chattooga County was concerning to Laurie Chandler, director of Berry’s Bonner Center for Community Engagement.
Chandler became the coordinator of relief efforts on campus when she began organizing a donation drive through the center in a matter of hours the Thursday after flash floods occurred.
Boxes were set up in the Cook Building, Hermann Hall and at the Krannert Information Desk to receive donations, primarily water but also including cleaning supplies and personal hygiene products.
In all, over 30 cases of water and a minivan load of bleach, diapers, trash bags and other items were given before Chandler ended the drive last Friday, Sept. 23, plus an untracked amount of financial gifts to the Chattooga Chamber.
“Berry has always been quick to respond in times of disaster or need,” Chandler said. “These are our neighbors, so we needed to begin the long work of recovery.”
Chandler advertised the donation drive and need for volunteers among faculty and staff, some of whom drove from or through Chattooga County and helped to deliver supplies. Chandler also suggested that Barber take a BCVS group to volunteer as part of the 9/11 Day of Service.
Students in the Bonner Scholars Program, which Chandler oversees, were not assigned to assist with immediate disaster relief, although the program plans to take a group over Fall Break.
However, the center’s Floyd County-based community partners with which the Scholars intern, over 30 including Habitat for Humanity, Mercy Care Rome and the Salvation Army, often service the greater Northwest Georgia area, and Chandler suspects they are helping the community with long-term recovery as part of their regular duties.
Immediate response is often emphasized in the wake of a natural disaster, Chandler said, and long-term recovery is often forgotten, especially as immediate response teams start to pull out and local groups are expected to meet all remaining needs.
“I’m hoping that students can find value in understanding that, while it might seem more glamorous to respond to a hurricane that’s hit the Gulf Coast, or a tornado in the Midwest, it’s more responsible for us to serve our neighbors,” Chandler said.
Another major donation drive on Berry’s campus was organized by Lynne Reilly, director of admissions for Berry College Elementary & Middle School (BCEMS). Reilly coordinates the school’s monthly service-learning projects, dubbed “H3O” for the use of head, heart and hands to serve others.
In the wake of the Chattooga County flooding, which directly impacted some BCEMS families, Reilly reached out to parents and discovered the best way to help would be collecting water and cleaning supplies.
To make logistics easier for BCEMS parents, Reilly asked families to bring water in all sizes and cleaning supplies through the car lines at the school and in the Cage Center parking lot during drop-off and pick-up times on Monday, Sept. 12, and Tuesday, Sept. 13.
“It was a small way to help but I think we made a difference,” Reilly said. “It helped the kids to realize that we’re only talking just a few miles up the road where people were without clean water.”
BCEMS families who lived in Chattooga County volunteered to deliver the items to City Hall in Summerville, along with sports drinks for the relief workers, delivering around three-and-a-half carloads of supplies in total, including over 100 cases of water.
The donation drive differed from typical H3O projects because the need was critical and close by, Reilly said, with direct connections to members of the BCEMS community. Previous H3O projects included fundraising for hurricane relief in Puerto Rico and Haiti.
In addition to relief efforts organized directly by the institution, members of the Berry community volunteered their time personally to help Chattooga County flood victims.
Kerrie Dalrymple, Krannert Facilities and Services Coordinator with the Student Activities Office, is a member of Dry Valley Baptist Church in Summerville.
The church served as a collection point for flats of water and, since the building did not lose water, it housed the Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief team, which serviced the county with meals, showers and laundry facilities in the week following the flooding, according to The Christian Index.
Dalrymple and her family donated water and cleaning supplies to their church’s distribution efforts, which she observed to be very well organized and accounting for those unable to leave their homes.
Some frustration existed among clients when some appeared to take more supplies than they needed, Dalrymple said, but tensions died down when it was found out that they were picking up supplies for shut-ins or people without vehicles.
“Everybody’s just grateful for any of it, all of it,” Dalrymple said.
Fellow member of Dry Valley Baptist Church, Samantha Reimer, is a freshman at Berry. Her family moved to Summerville in June from Colorado, where Reimer said fires proved to be the most dangerous natural disaster.
“We’ve never seen rain come down like that,” Reimer said of the initial flooding on the night of Sept. 3. “I woke up in the middle of the night hearing rain just pouring, and then the next morning it was still coming down heavy.”
Thankfully, the Reimers were not badly affected by the flooding and only had to boil their water for 24 hours because do not draw water from the Summerville Water Treatment Plant, and Samantha said this put them in a position to help others.
Reimer’s father, new director of the Berry Center for Integrity and Leadership Bob Reimer, helped to deliver supplies raised by the Bonner Center’s donation drive.
Samantha spent her Labor Day holiday preparing and loading around 300 boxed meals for the Salvation Army to distribute around Chattooga County.
Although she was unavailable during the day once classes resumed, Reimer did help at the church on Wednesday nights however possible.
“It’s very satisfactory,” Reimer said. “Even if you never personally hear a thank-you, it’s the knowledge that, that one meal made someone’s life just a little bit easier, that day a little bit brighter, they know somebody was caring for them.”
Those Reimer met who were impacted the worst by the flooding were very thankful for the help from the churches and Chattooga County community. A servant’s heart is also the aspect of her new school community that Reimer most appreciates.
“The college doesn’t just focus inwards,” the freshman said. “It focuses inwards when it needs to, but it focuses outwards to improve the lives of others.”