Just two days after Hurricane Sally made landfall, Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief workers were at First Baptist Church, Gulf Shores, getting ready to dig in.

Mark Wakefield, the state’s lead strategist for Disaster Relief, was onsite and surveying the damage to the church, which included flooding and a blown out window in the sanctuary.

An Incident Command Center is being assembled at First, Gulf Shores, and teams from Coffee Baptist Association and Southeast Alabama Baptist Association arrived Sept. 18 and are gearing up for the cleanup efforts ahead. When they arrived, power had not yet been restored to the church.

John Thomas, director of missions for Southeast Alabama Association, is the “white hat” for the command center, meaning he will be spearheading the cleanup efforts from this location.

This article was originally published here, at thealabamabaptist.org.