“This might be the way my life ends.”
That was the thought Scott Smith couldn’t shake after a third tree fell through his roof in the early morning hours of Sept. 27.
Smith — who has served for the past 45 years as a Baptist campus minister, the last 40 of those at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina — had gone into his basement after learning from a weather report that Hurricane Helene was headed for his area.
A few hours later, the trees started falling.
“I said, ‘OK, God, if You’re going to take me, please make it quick,’” Smith said. “‘I know where I’m going, I’m confident of that, but please don’t make it painful.’”
Finally, the rain stopped
A fourth tree fell on his house, and then a fifth. Somewhere in the midst of that, he texted his two adult children to let them know where to find him if they needed to dig him out. And then finally, the rain stopped.
“I went upstairs, and I heard a knock on the door, and it was my son — he had walked to my house,” Smith said. “I fell into his arms, and I just cried.”
Help showed up
As the sun came up, help started showing up too. Some of his Baptist Campus Ministries alumni from over the years came and spent 12 hours lifting the trees off his house. Some current students came to help clean up the yard.
And teams from South Carolina Baptist Disaster Relief came to help his neighbors too.
Tony Wolfe, executive director-treasurer for the South Carolina Baptist Convention, said about 1,000 trained and credentialed disaster relief volunteers from the state have been out serving local communities, plus other untrained volunteers who have found ways to help their neighbors and get involved.
“This may be the biggest disaster at least in terms of wind damage that our state has ever known,” Wolfe said.
On the day the hurricane hit, nearly half of South Carolina residents lost power, and many still wait for power to be restored.
And that’s only part of the havoc Helene has wreaked — the storm barreled through Florida, Georgia and South Carolina before hanging over North Carolina and Tennessee and causing unprecedented flooding.
The death toll is rising — more than 175 in the U.S., with at least 36 of those in South Carolina.
And thousands of people across the five states are trying to deal with the lack of power, clean up roads and houses and get food to eat.
Southern Baptist Disaster Relief teams from all over are helping with that, including teams from Alabama, which are running operations an hour south of Greenwood in Clearwater, South Carolina.
“Alabama is kind of leading the way here in South Carolina,” Wolfe said, noting that the teams were working to feed the surrounding county as well as help with removing fallen trees.
Financial need
Alabama Baptists have also sent a financial gift to help South Carolina Baptists meet the vast needs in their state.
“We do have a financial need — the devastation is great,” Wolfe said. “We also need more teams to come. There’s months and months’ worth of work for chainsaw units, and that’s all over the state.”
He asked for prayer for endurance for those who are working and “for God to open the hearts of people in our neighborhoods who need to hear and respond to the gospel favorably.”
