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After Isabel, People Need to Know Others CareDate: September 22, 2003 
What people in southeastern Baltimore County, Md. need most right now is to know that people care about them, says the Rev. Laurie Gates-Wood, pastor at Lodge Forest United Methodist Church. She was praying Friday morning, in the wee hours when Isabel was at its worst, knowing her community was in trouble.
"I knew there were problems when the sirens started. Then there were helicopters. You knew people were in trouble and there was nothing you could do. There was a fire truck going by every two minutes."
Gates-Wood called every person in her 200-member congregation she knew who lived in the waterfront. She's been visiting the hardest hit, people like Shelly Marzocchi of Fort Howard. She listens to their stories and prays with and for them.
Marzocchi had seen flooding before but never anything like the high tide and storm surge that came. The river rose two feet in less than two hours; it covered her kitchen floor in a matter of minutes.
At 1 A.M. Friday morning, Marzocchi and her boys walked in waist-deep water to her mother-in-law's house, next door but on higher ground. "The wind was just whipping. There were four-foot waves breaking and rolling in," she said.
On Monday Marzocchi could hardly tell her story without tears starting in her eyes. "I lost two furnaces, two air conditioners, duct work, all kinds of appliances like mixers and blenders," she said.
She had flood insurance. But that can't replace the family photos and documents she lost -- her children's birth certificates, their baptism certificate, her marriage certificate. She was trying to dry them in the sun.
Marzocchi worries about where they will live while the house is being repaired, she said, and about when her boys will be able to go back to school. Schools in Baltimore County were still closed Monday.
Pastor Gates-Wood plans to visit all of her church members and also others in the community. She's worrying about them all. "There is a family who was very poor-- they didn't even have running water - and their house was destroyed. I don't know what happened to them."
People in these neighborhoods, she said, aren't just vulnerable to being the "forgotten" flood survivors. "People feel like they're forgotten. They've felt that way for years. They just want to know somebody cares. To me, that's the bottom line in ministry. It's that you love people."
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This story has been adapted from an article that Susan Kim wrote for Disaster News Network, http://www.disasternews.net.
Photo: The Rev. Laurie Gates-Wood (right) shares a hug with flood survivor Shelly Marzocchi. Credit: DNN photo by Susan Kim, http://www.disasternews.net. Click on photo to see a larger version.
Please give generously to UMCOR's Hurricanes 2003, Advance #982438. Your tax-deductible gift may be placed in United Methodist church offering plates or sent directly to: UMCOR, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 330, New York, N.Y. 10115. Checks should be written to UMCOR. Call 1-800-554-8583 to make a credit card donation. Persons who can volunteer to work in the recovery efforts may call UMCOR's Volunteer Line toll free: 1-800-918-3100.
You can also help replenish the supply of flood buckets at the UMCOR Sager Brown Depot. Flood buckets are filled with cleaning supplies that people use to clean their homes after floods and hurricanes. For assembly and shipping instructions, call the depot at 1-800-814-8765 or visit UMCOR's emergency kits webpage. Please note that UMCOR cannot pay for shipping or pick up flood buckets to transport them to the depot. You may also give a financial donation to purchase cleaning supplies that the Depot staff and volunteers will use to assemble flood buckets. To help purchase cleaning supplies, give to UMCOR's Material Resource Ministry, Advance #901440.
