SE Florida assesses damage after Wilma

            A week after Hurricane Wilma swept across Florida, the Diocese of Southeast Florida still lacks complete information on the status of its 83 congregations.

          About 720,000 households and businesses in south Florida were still without electricity on Nov. 1; and telephone service, both landlines and cellular, is intermittent at best in many areas.

          As gas stations begin to reopen, the long lines of cars are diminishing, but with many traffic signals down, driving is challenging—and slow.

          By the day after the storm, power had been restored at the Diocesan Office, and all staff members have returned to work.

          The diocesan website, which was unavailable for a week, is back online, but cannot be updated until the webmaster has internet access. A temporary webpage, hosted by the Diocese of Maine, is providing post-Wilma updates at www.diomaine.org/diosef.html.

          Many diocesan meetings and events scheduled for the first two weeks of November have been postponed, and a new date has not been set the Diocesan Convention, which was postponed from last weekend due to the threat of the storm.

          The good news is that most clergy who have been contacted report no catastrophic damage, although some churches have moderately severe damage and several will probably need new roofs. Trees are down, there are missing shingles and roof tiles, and there is debris everywhere.

          At Trinity Cathedral, Miami, a window was blown out of the cathedral hall and landed, almost intact, in the parking lot of the Diocesan Office.

Quick action on the part of cathedral sexton Ernest Gipson “saved seven bishops”, says interim Dean Robert Libby; Gipson, whose apartment is over the cathedral hall, heard the crash and ran downstairs in time to rescue the bishops’ portraits that hung near the window.

The Rev. Denise Hudspeth, priest in charge of two small congregations in Pahokee and Belle Glade, two rural towns at the edge of Lake Okeechobee, reports that although damage to the church buildings was not significant, she is concerned for her parishioners and their communities.

In Pahokee, fallen trees have made even major roads impassable and houses and cars have been crushed.

Members of the Haitian community in Belle Glade, many of them farmworkers, were hit hard, Hudspeth says. “Many of them fled, and those who stayed have no food—nothing.”

She is concerned also for the jobs of those who work in the sugarcane fields, because the storm “flattened” much of the cane.

Hudspeth is working to be able to set up a distribution center for relief supplies at St. John’s, Belle Glade.

          There is equally severe damage in the lower Keys. At. St. Columba, Marathon, storm surge soaked the church carpet and destroyed everything stored on the ground level of the rectory. At St. Francis-in-the-Keys, Big Pine Key, rector Chris Todd and his family had three family cars ruined by the rising water.

          Parishioners of the two Key West congregations, St. Paul’s and St. Peter’s, also lost cars to the flooding. Some had more than five feet of seawater in their homes and have lost everything. Additional rain on Halloween night has added to the misery as some hurricane-damaged roofs collapsed.

          But help is on the way—Episcopal Relief and Development has sent a $25,000 emergency grant, and parishes in the neighboring dioceses of Southwest Florida and Central Florida have offered donations and volunteer work teams.

          Canon to the Ordinary Michael Durning of Southwest Florida is coming to Ft. Lauderdale this weekend with a check—and a much-needed generator.

          Good Shepherd, Punta Gorda, which suffered devastating damage from Hurricane Charley last year, is working with Hudspeth to provide supplies for her churches to distribute in their wounded communities. Another Southwest Florida parish may also help in this effort.

          Fr. John Liebler, rector of St. Andrew’s, Fort Pierce, emailed an offer of work teams ready to be on the job “with a few days’ notice”.

          He noted a history of mutual help in hurricane season: “St. Andrew's, Fort Pierce, helped [in Miami] after Hurricane Andrew.  St. Stephen's, Coconut Grove, helped us after Frances/Jeanne. We are there for you…”

          The diocese is accepting donations for hurricane relief. Checks made payable to Diocese of Southeast Florida and marked for “hurricane relief” can be mailed to: Diocese of Southeast Florida, 525 NE 15 St., Miami, FL  33161.