Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New York, and Washington.
CONTACT: Linda Bloom
Feb. 5, 1996
by Dean Snyder*
TROUT RUN, Pa. -- On the morning of Jan. 30 -- day 11 after the flood -- a volunteer team from Trout Run United Methodist Church prepared to spend a second day mopping mud from a house where the six-foot-high waters had destroyed nearly everything the family owned, including their surveying business.
At the church, Ginny Kiessler, a substitute teacher, was at the telephones, taking calls from those who needed help. Dot Lose, a retired site manager of a United Methodist church camp, organized the kitchen to prepare meals for flood victims and volunteers.
Cody Short -- a seventeen-year-old who'd taken the day off from school -- and the Rev. Mark Brumbach had filled portable heaters with kerosene to thaw the frozen mud in a flooded house-trailer so that volunteers could help the family sort through their personal belongings.
While Brumbach and Lose paused for a quick cup of coffee in the church basement, Kiessler brought news that an eight-year-old boy in nearby Rose Valley had been killed when he slipped on the ice and fell under the wheel of a school bus.
Brumbach, who also serves as a pastor there, made calls to see if the boy's family or the bus driver needed pastoral care. Lose went back to the kitchen to cry in private.
Trout Run, 11 miles north of Williamsport, was a town occupied by "quiet country folk" before the waters of Lycoming Creek damaged more than 60 homes and destroyed another 50 mobile homes. People were stunned by the magnitude of the disaster, according to Brumbach.
He spent Jan. 19, the day of the flood, with a man whose elderly parents drowned in their car before rescue workers could reach them. He also comforted the friends of a 37-year-old woman who was swept off the roof of her trailer and drowned.
The next day, Brumbach ripped apart a church directory and passed out pages to church members who stopped by. "Tell them to wear work clothes to church tomorrow and bring with them whatever food they have in their refrigerators," he instructed.
That Sunday, meals were available for flood victims in the church basement and teams traveled from door-to-door seeing what help was needed. The work has continued ever since.
"It seemed the natural thing to do--to get organized and help people," Brumbach said. "We learned how to do it by trial and error."
Donations of food and cleaning supplies have poured in, but the pastor expects financial support and outside volunteers will be needed.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) is providing a $50,000 emergency grant to the Central Pennsylvania Conference, according to the Rev. Tom Shatto, conference disaster response coordinator.
Two denominational church and community workers have been mobilized to coordinate continued cleanup, repairs and rebuilding.
"Our goal is to make personal contact with each victim referred to us by pastors," Shatto said.
* Snyder is editor of The Link of the Central Pennsylvania Annual Conference.
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