North Carolina and South Carolina agencies providing relief for Hurricane Ida victims

YORK COUNTY, S.C. (WBTV) -The threat of storm surge and flooding continues as government officials urge people who left not to come back.

Search and rescue efforts are also in full swing as more people require help to escape the floods, but that has not stopped some people who are mobilizing to help from getting boots on the ground early for people in need.

Two groups - one in each of the Carolinas - to find out what it is like in the path of destruction. The full extent of the damage is still to be determined.

”The need is immediate,” says Samaritan’s Purse Director Bruce Poss.

That is why a team from Boone based Samaritan’s Purse coming from the Wilkesboro warehouse is already down there trying to pinpoint exactly what is needed. Poss says showers, clothes, food, if it is needed, they will make a way to get it.

”We want people to know that we care,” says Poss. “That they are not forgotten, God has not forgotten them.”

What is eerie to him—this storm hitting so close to the anniversary of Katrina, a storm that caused the agency to spend five years in the hurricane hit Louisiana.

”16 years later this is happening and it is much different than that. But there’s some similarities in these storms,” he says.

Samaritan’s Purse is not the only place to mobilize. South Carolina Southern Baptist Convention’s Randy Creamer is the director of disaster relief. Creamer described what being in a disaster torn area.

”I’d really hope within the next 36 hours we would have folks on the road,” says Creamer. ”The people there they don’t know where to go or what to do so we’re getting there and we say how can we help you physically.”

That physical help—clean up efforts and helping families with damaged homes, but Creamer says sometimes it is not just physical but emotional that people need help with.

”Often that’s just listening and letting them tell us what there needs are,” he says. “We can’t take care of everything but we try to get them started in the right direction.”

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