'Please Don't Forget Us' Say New York's Relief Workers

As the country slowly returns to a daily routine, relief efforts at Ground Zero in New York City continue ... and will for months. But now that the burning, collapsing towers aren't being flashed across TV screens every few minutes, some in the relief community fear America will begin to forget

"I've worked many, many disasters," Larry Jones, founder of Feed the Children, told Religion Today. "And when they first happen, everybody says they are going to help. Well, people go back to work and try to find some normalcy in their life. While everyone is stepping forward today, I'm concerned about next week and next month."

Feed The Children is a Christian, charitable organization that provides physical, spiritual, educational, psychological, economic and medical assistance to those in need in the United States and internationally.

Because the organization is based in Oklahoma City, Jones was repeatedly called upon by international and national media who depended on Feed The Children to act as a conduit between the bomb site and their viewing audiences around the world.

And having helped with relief following the Oklahoma City bombing, Jones has a good basis of comparison now. "In Oklahoma City, I stayed on site six weeks. This one is going to take months or years to clean up. The building in Oklahoma City was about 12-14 stories. Here there were two - 110 stories each."

Jones said he is concerned that next month, compassion fatigue will set in, or people will tire of hearing about the disaster. "At the end of the thing in Oklahoma City, we were alone," said Jones. "The American people need to know, just as they are standing in the front lines today, that in one month or two months, they are still going to have to be on the front lines."

Ironically, Jones witnessed both the Oklahoma City bombing and the World Trade Center crashes "from about the same distance" in person. He was already in New York to make a food drop the Saturday before the attack. On Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, Jones was getting ready to go to the airport when he saw the first news report.

"So I went outside," he shared. "It looked like bad ... indescribable. I told my wife, 'I'm sure the airport's going to close. We're just going to stay and work.' So I got on the phone with my office and in less than 24 hours, I had 14 truckloads of relief supplies already gathered.

"Then I went down to the site and started trying to figure out how to make this work. I discovered you had to have police escorts to get your trucks in," Jones continued. "I ran into all kinds of roadblocks, then I ran into two policemen who had previously helped me in Harlem at a food drop. They asked me, 'What's your problem?' so I told them, and they said, 'You don't have a problem anymore!'"

Feed The Children has been at the disaster site ever since. They have delivered six semi-truckloads of relief items to New York, two to Washington, D.C., and another 53 truckloads have been committed by corporate sponsors. Their New Jersey distribution center (180,000 square feet) is being used as a staging area for future deliveries, and supplies are welcome.

Operation Blessing

Operation Blessing International (OBI) is another of the organizations stationed at Ground Zero since day one. Richard Kohl, OBI's New York Center director, told Religion Today, "We're going to be there as long as it takes. We've had an office there for more than 14 years and we're going to be there to see this thing through and do what needs to be done."

The New York Outreach Center, established in the 1980s, provides hunger relief, educational projects, homeless programs, children's outreach, and disaster relief to metro New York City and the surrounding communities.

In less than an hour of the terrorist attacks, the OBI Disaster Response Team was coordinating a plan for disaster aid through its Outreach Centers in both New York and Washington. Disaster funding was immediately provided to the New York Center as disaster team members and church networks were beginning to assess the scope of the crisis and the pressing needs of the communities under attack.

In addition, OBI's Hunger Strike Force contacted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and made available their fleet of tractor-trailer refrigerated trucks to FEMA to transport relief supplies.

"Now the need is for funding," said Kohl. "As we collaborate with our OBI outreach centers in New York and Washington, the plea has come for funding. Monetary donations will allow them to respond immediately to the specific needs, and 100 percent of all donations will go directly to the victims of this horrific tragedy."

In New York City, OBI's Outreach Center Director, the Rev. Jim Esposito, has requested a prayer movement for the families and loved ones of those hurt in the World Trade Center terrorism. "Our church, Living Word Church, is several blocks from the World Trade Center," Esposito explained. Working 18-hour days since disaster struck the World Trade Center, Esposito remains determined to help as many relief teams as possible in a variety of ways.

The 'Spiritual Emergency Room'

Just hours after the terrorist attack in New York, Chaplain Bob Vickers was in a van with four other members of the Southern Baptist Convention's (SBC) disaster relief team, heading north from Atlanta. He knew he had to get to Ground Zero as quickly as possible to begin caring for the "spiritually wounded." While medical doctors prepared to receive people with broken bodies, Vickers knew his place was in the "spiritual emergency room."

"The crush of human need is indescribable," said Vickers. People from all walks of life and faiths - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu - needed help and the message of God's undying love. "In this depth of need, everybody realizes that there has to be something more than where they are. They are so wide open to the message."

Vickers has since returned to Atlanta to set up a nationwide network of Southern Baptist chaplains who are traveling to New York, each spending a week or more helping the spiritually wounded. Some are in the makeshift morgue, helping emergency workers bear the burden of recovering human remains. Some are at the family assistance center, caring for families who have lost loved ones in the atrocity.

One chaplain from Phoenix, Ariz., retiring next week from the Air Force, said he wants to spend his final days serving his country at Ground Zero. Still other chaplains have come from Dallas, South Carolina and Kansas, all with stories of the impact and the agony the Sept. 11 attack has had on rescue workers and victim's families.

All of the many rescue teams "are tired but determined; realistic but very hopeful," said OBI's Esposito. "They have unity of purpose. The biggest need at Ground Zero is love, prayer, and the faith of God's people to support them."