Contemplating Christmas after the flood

COLUMBIA, S.C.—Beside a donated Christmas tree, sparsely decorated with donated ornaments, Kira Stokes sat on a sofa in a church ministry home earlier this month with her laptop open and a mountain of laundry beside her. A volunteer from the church helped fold the clothes while Stokes resumed a job thrust upon her by a 1,000-year flood: deciphering the idiosyncrasies of disaster relief.

Stokes, with her husband Luke and their 5-year-old twins, have moved at least six times since Oct. 4 but are hoping to settle into a permanent home by Christmas Day. Flood waters consumed their modest ranch-style home in a quiet, tight-knit neighborhood more than 10 weeks ago.

Despite catastrophic loss, they have not been without this Christmas season, thanks to an outpouring of community and church support.

Three months have passed, but Stokes still shudders when recalling the 5 a.m. wake up call from a frantic neighbor: “You need to get out! A dam gave way! The neighborhood is flooding!”

Groggy, Stokes and her husband each grabbed a child, threw their cat into a suitcase, hooked a leash to the dog, and opened the door to the garage. They discovered their cars already submerged and water rapidly climbing the steps to the back door. A fireman struggling in what they later learned was a rip current yelled at them to get back inside.

Within minutes, water poured in through windows and vents. The Stokeses were trapped in their living room. Furnishings rushed from one end of the room to the other. Appliances toppled.

“Standing in pajamas that clung to my skin and a child in my arms, I experienced the greatest terror,” Stokes recalled. “I prayed for God’s mercy, frozen with the harrowing realization that Luke and I might have to hold our children as they drowned in our arms.”

Rescue workers and a neighbor returned with a boat. The Stokeses had to pass the twins, with no life jackets, to their rescuers. They experienced a second wave of terror as their rescue boat stalled in rapids swirling with vehicles, swing sets, grills, mail boxes, and other debris.

“Please God, spare us,” Stokes recalls crying. “I was not ready to orphan my children.”

Those maneuvering the boat grabbed the tops of crepe myrtle trees to steer out of the turbulent current that engulfed the entire neighborhood.

After escaping the floodwater, the Stokeses went to a friend’s home for warmth and dry clothing. After a short stint at a shelter, family, friends, and church members began offering space. The Stokeses and hundreds of families like them throughout the state—mostly in the Columbia area— are still in a period of resettlement. They wait, all the while researching the intricate web of insurance agents, FEMA, and loans. Financial ruin looms for many families as they struggle to pay mortgages on homes they will never again inhabit. Due to the complexities of flood insurance, the few who had it are still not fully covered, and most in Columbia had no flood insurance.

But Stokes told me the family’s needs are met. A Women of the Church email chain helps keep them supplied with food, babysitting, moving assistance, and occasional housework. Donated clothing, gift cards, and cash sustain them. They have most of the essentials they need to start over: furniture, appliances, electronics, linens, clothing, kitchen items, toys. Friends from a college Bible study divide days of the month to text scriptures and devotionals.

“People have prayed for us tirelessly … endlessly,” Stokes said.

Presents for the children, wrapped and positioned under the tree, have been donated. What do their parents wants for Christmas? Not to have to move again, Stokes quipped. But she recognizes the flood, as disastrous as it was, gifted them with something extraordinary—“a wondrous love that surrounds my family and me. We have so many new friends.”

“I walk into a future with many uncertainties, but I walk now forever changed by the loving care and provision that has been poured out onto us,” she said.