Residents along the deep south and Gulf Coast have begun to dig out from the damage left behind following an outbreak of tornadoes over the weekend. From January 21 through the 23, as many as 29 tornadoes swept across six states, leaving as many as 20 people dead, hundreds of homes and businesses destroyed and scattered power outages through out.
In an apparent random act of violence, the education wing of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth, Texas was extensively vandalized last Saturday evening. Officials believe the vandals gained entry to the building by breaking windows around 8:00pm and then continued their rampage until 4:20am Sunday when a church steward arrived and startled them away.
Presbyterian churches located within a few miles of the Fort Lauderdale – Hollywood International Airport are still trying to wrap their minds around last Friday’s shootings that left five people dead and several injured. The suspect, Esteban Santiago, 26, appeared before a federal magistrate judge on Monday and could possibly face the death penalty.
It’s been over a month since fire broke out in an Oakland, California warehouse, known as Ghost Ship, killing 36 people. Just before Christmas, members of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance’s National Response Team, were invited to visit the community and meet with faith leaders.
The past year has been a challenging one for communities dealing with contaminated water supplies. Flint, Michigan has garnered national attention for nearly three years after improper source treatment caused lead from aging pipes to leach into the water. Between 6,000 and 12,000 residents have experienced a series of health problems including high levels of lead in the blood.
If you talk with people living along the coastline of North and South Carolina, they will be quick to tell you, they’ve had enough rain to last a lifetime. Hurricane Matthew and 2015’s “one-thousand-year rain” have caused some significant problems for many, especially in the Charleston area.
Fire officials in Inglewood, Tennessee are still trying to determine the exact cause of two separate fires at the Eastminster Presbyterian Church on Sunday. The first fire was extinguished quickly, according to Pastor Gilbert Varela.
It’s been two months since Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti, leaving a path of death and destruction that will take years for its residents to recover. More than a thousand people are believed to have perished when the hurricane made landfall as a Category 4 storm on October 4.
For Greg Bennett, hours seemed like days last week as he awaited the approval to travel into smoke-filled Gatlinburg to see if the church he’s pastored had survived the flames. Bennett is a commissioned ruling elder with the Presbytery of East Tennessee as well as pastor of the Gatlinburg Presbyterian Church.
Days after fires scorched parts of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, within the Great Smoky Mountains, residents and church leaders are still waiting to find out how significant the damage is
