Members Help Texas Flood Victims

After rains and floods displaced approximately ten thousand people and damaged hundreds of homes, Church members in the Houston, Texas, area rallied to help friends, neighbors, and other residents recover from the disaster.

“It was terrible,” observed Raymond Douglas Stewart, president of the Kingwood Texas Stake, which encompasses much of the area hardest hit by the rain and flooding that began October 17. “People lost everything. Their homes were gone, their furniture was ruined, their cars were underwater.”

An estimated nineteen people died in flood-related incidents. In the Kingwood stake alone, fifty families were evacuated from their homes. In all, twelve stakes in the area were affected in some way, but no Church members lost their lives in the flooding.

“One of the men in our stake, Earl Barneycastle, retreated up to the attic of his home,” President Stewart said. “The waters rose so fast, he didn’t have time to get away. He had his two grandsons with him, and the fire department had to cut a hole in the roof to rescue him and the children.”

In the nearby Houston Texas North Stake, another thirty-five families were evacuated, reported stake president Stanley Ellis. The homes of some twenty-two members sustained damage.

“The Church organization worked well,” said President Ellis. “Home teachers, priesthood quorums, and Relief Societies rallied quickly to help. We were able to track down members needing shelter and food and offer immediate assistance.

“One member woke up early in the morning and knew his home was going to be flooded,” President Ellis continued. “He called a nearby neighbor, a member of the Church, and they were able to take all his possessions—except three large pieces of furniture—up to the attic, where they remained dry. The two stacked the large furniture, including a grand piano, on big plastic buckets the family had used for food storage. Those three pieces were all saved, so the food storage came in handy in more ways than one!”

Most displaced members stayed with friends, relatives, or other members. Once the heavy rains subsided, members quickly organized to help. On the first night of flooding, fourteen-year-old Lindsay Krogel and her friend, Stephanie Welch, listened to news reports. Wanting to help, they called a temporary evacuation center and asked what supplies were needed. Then the young women called their youth leaders in the Kingwood Ward to propose a quick service project. Within hours, youth in the ward had gathered two van loads of clothes, blankets, bedding, and toys. The youth took the supplies to the center that night.

Eager to continue their service, Lindsay and Stephanie and some friends spent the next few days at the shelter entertaining children.

Others also offered assistance. That first night, members from the single-adult branch in the Houston North stake prepared several hundred sandwiches for flood victims. Other members in the stake continued to make thousands of sandwiches with supplies from the bishops’ storehouse during the following days.

Members’ needs were quickly assessed. Short-term needs like clothes and food were met, and damage reports on homes began to trickle in. Within hours after the waters began receding, members’ homes were being cleaned out.

On the weekend of October 22 and 23, hundreds gathered for early-morning sacrament meetings and then continued the overwhelming job of cleaning up.

“We shoveled mud, rolled out ruined carpet, stripped sheetrock, carried away ruined furniture,” President Stewart said. On Saturday several hundred members of his stake completed cleaning up members’ homes and started to help anyone else who needed help. More than twelve hundred continued that task on the next day.

Relief Society sisters cleaned carloads of dirty dishes and clothes and also gathered piles of baby clothes that were desperately needed. Youth carted wheelbarrows of mud and damaged items to garbage piles.

“One woman, living alone, burst into tears when we helped her clean her home,” President Stewart said. “She kept saying, ‘I’m not alone anymore.’ Another man commented that he saw no human beings in his house; all he saw was a bunch of angels. We got great response wherever we went.”

Similar groups organized in other stakes experienced the same gratitude. In President Ellis’s stake, three to four hundred members showed up on Saturday for cleanup efforts; more than six hundred people continued the project on Sunday.

“Some of the homes were reduced to studs and plumbing,” President Ellis commented. “But the work was done. Full-time missionaries were helping from the beginning. One situation that impressed me involved an elderly man, probably in his seventies. He was trying to roll up his wet carpet and move it out. Two missionaries came in and started to help him, and he was so grateful that he began to cry.

“Most of the people we helped were not members of the Church, and some of the people in the subdivisions have a whole new impression of the Church.”

Members from the Kingwood Texas Stake form a line to help clean out a member’s home. (Photography by Raymond Douglas Stewart.)

A flooded home in the Kingwood Texas Stake; hundreds of other homes were damaged or destroyed in the flood.