Army Of Volunteers Helps Rebuild Neighbors Unite After Floods To Get Lives Started Again

Darlene Seaton wanted to volunteer to help with flood cleanup, but with two young children at home she didn’t know what she could do.

So she asked God.

And boy, did he answer.

“I prayed and all of a sudden my brother-in-law showed up with 45 bags of laundry,” Seaton says.

Since then, her Kellogg home has become laundry central for flood victims.

Garbage bag after garbage bag full of river-soaked clothes, bedding and towels line her garage and living room. She and her husband distribute the sopping bags to other volunteers who wash the clothes. Then the Seatons make sure they get returned - clean and dry - to their owners.

Seaton is part of a massive volunteer effort that has mobilized in the wake of the worst flooding the Northwest has seen in two decades.

This army of volunteers - made up of churches, private citizens and businesses - has been drawn into service by the suffering of their neighbors.

“Everyone is just really coming together,” says Sandy VonBehren, of Kootenai County Disaster Services. She has a three-page list of people who have volunteered everything from food, beds, equipment and their time. “It just seems like they’re coming from everywhere.”

At Bodine’s Bar in Cataldo, members of the Cataldo Lighthouse Ministries have set up a makeshift volunteer center.

It is the heart of a network that involves hundreds of people from churches throughout the Inland Northwest, including Spokane.

“We feel it is the churches’ responsibility to help these people get back to stability,” says Mary Marshall, one of the organizers.

The various church groups have not only collected donations, but have canvassed the Silver Valley, checking to see who needs help.

Bt 9 a.m. Saturday, volunteers began shuffling into the bar with coffee in hand. Marshall and Randy Seaton, another organizer, quickly assigned crews to clean up homes, haul garbage and pick up donations.

Their motto comes from the Bible: “Whoever asks you to go with them one mile, go two,” Marshall says.

More than 6 feet of water filled Lois Shadle’s Cataldo home, leaving behind silt and ruined walls. The waters wiped out a shed, left firewood scattered through her yard and turned a garage into a wet mess.

When her sons arrived to help clean up they were overwhelmed. “Where do you start?” her son Bob Street said.

On Saturday, 100 volunteers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints swept through the neighborhood doing a week’s worth of work in one morning.

They stripped the paneling from Shadle’s home and hauled truckloads of ruined drywall, wood and debris from the garage to the dump.

At other homes they ripped out water-logged carpets and hauled away ruined furniture.

“Whenever a disaster hits it brings the best out in people,” said Bishop Kevin Packard. “I think people are genuinely concerned for each other.”

Andy Street watched in grateful awe. “I don’t know if a guy could do it all without all this help,” he said.

Jackie Marmon spent Saturday filling garbage bags full of wet clothes and blankets.

The floodwater is gone from inside her Cataldo apartment but it has left behind a foul, musty odor and a watermark that rolls across her windows and wood-paneled walls like the waves on an ocean.

“I have some dry stuff left but not a whole lot,” Marmon says. Still, she finds reason to be grateful. The church volunteers helped the seam- stress clean out her apartment and found her a sewing machine to replace the one destroyed. They gave her free day care for her baby and took 14 bags of laundry to wash.

“They’ve been a godsend.”

Maxine Ledbetter is one of more than 20 volunteers on Darlene Seaton’s “People Helping People: The Laundry List.”

“I’m in my 81st year, I can’t do much but I can do laundry,” the silver-haired Ledbetter says with a grin. “These people need their things cleaned and back to them.”

The volunteers are also offering more than just physical help.

“A lot of these people are just devastated, so we’re giving them spiritual help as well,” Randy Seaton says.

And that’s just what Marmon needs. “It’s nice to know they’re there and that they care.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: HELP Want to get involved in the volunteer effort? Here’s how you can help. Emmanuel Baptist Church at 3115 N. 15th Street in CdA, is taking donations of food, bedding and money for flood victims. St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store is accepting donations for flood victims at 108 E. Walnut Avenue in CdA. To pick up goods, victims should get vouchers from the Red Cross, the Cataldo Lighthouse Ministries or from St. Vincent de Paul’s social services office. Kingston Baptist Church, at 121 B. Aspen Way in Kingston, also is accepting donations. For information, Call 682-4970. To make donations in the Silver Valley, call 682-2034. To volunteer time in work parties, call 783-4211 before 8 p.m. Those in need of help in the Silver Valley should call for volunteers at 682-4340.