Report From Good Shepherd, Binghamton On The Floods
Dear Bishop Bill,
Here's a brief report on conditions here in Binghamton.
1. Estimated about 20K people have been evacuated from their homes.
2. The shelters around town are full.
3. No bridges are open (since Binghamton is a city built on the confluence of two rivers, this poses a huge problem)
4. Grocery stores are closed.
5. The city is turning off water in certain neighborhoods to prevent contamination.
6. Downtown and many neighborhoods underwater.
7. So far we have 9 parishioners who have been evacuated (who we know about). We only have information about one home which is presently filled with water.
8. We've opened the church as a shelter and as a food center providing canned goods and warm meals and we've gotten steady traffic all day.
9. We don't know how many people are going to spend the night here tonight yet but it should be under 10 people. We have the capacity for a lot more and the official city shelters have just now reached their limits so we expect we might see more before the week is out.
10. Our mission group coordinator, Joe Kovac, (mission groups are small group bible studies with a mission focus) is working on getting a list of people willing to work on Saturday (no one is permitted to do anything tomorrow since the water will be high) and from that list we'll send out teams to various places where they are needed.
Meanwhile we'll keep making food and keep the doors open.
thank you for any prayers you can offer.
In Christ
Matt
Addendum: Binghamton has 60K people so, one third right now are out of their homes
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