(The Center Square) – A church in the mountains of eastern Tennessee is rebuilding after Hurricane Helene’s flood waters ripped away parts of the building.
The main sanctuary is mostly intact. Recovery, now in the sixth week, remains a journey.
Volunteers had to dig out Riverview Baptist Church in Erwin and fully gut the building to begin rebuilding. Water and mud damaged the church’s electrical system.
“We had about 2½, 3 feet of water in the second story level where the sanctuary is,” Jeff Simmons, a deacon at the church, told The Center Square in an interview. “So, when the water went down, we had about a foot of mud in there. And the basement had anywhere from 3 to 4 feet of mud in there.”
The church of about 80 congregants sits in view of Interstate 26 where flood water swiped the bridges going both directions into the raging Nolichucky River. A temporary causeway reconnecting I-26 was built in 33 days and reopened last week. Before that, all traffic detoured through Erwin, a town of about 6,000.
On the Monday after the storm, roughly 50 volunteers came together to help dig the church out. By Monday evening, most of the church’s parking lot was cleared, mud shoveled from the building, and carpet already torn out, according to Simmons.
“This is a total, total tear-out down here,” he said. “Everything had to be replaced.”
The church is rebuilding thanks to donations and a GoFundMe page set up by Simmons’ wife and isn’t getting insurance money or government funds, he said.
Just over a month after the storm hit, the church’s basement is all reframed and has new wiring.
In the back of the church, two structures attached to the church that served as a fellowship hall and classrooms were lost and need to be rebuilt.
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“It got pulled off and went down the river, it’s completely gone,” Simmons said. “Nothing left of it.”
Simmons hopes the church will mostly be ready by Christmas.