Denver Newsroom, Sep 15, 2020 / 05:11 pm (CNA).- “Level one, which is get ready. Level two, get set. And level three – go, get out of there,” Bishop Peter Smith, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, told CNA.
The people of Oregon and California are now all too familiar with those warning levels, as wildfires in both states continue to rage, burning millions of acres and killing at least 36 people, with dozens more missing.
Smith said while he was not yet aware of a Catholic church that had burned to the ground, there were several that reached level three evacuations, leaving some pastors hop-scotching to avoid the next blaze.
“We’ve had cases where pastors have had to pack what they immediately need and then take the Blessed Sacrament and the sacred vessels with them and leave, and move to another location,” Smith said. “I believe we have one pastor that is now in the process of a second move from one location to another, and then from that location to another location, in southern Oregon.
The blazes choked the air with so much ash and smoke that the skies turned orange, and the clouds of smoke were visible on satellite images.
“It’s just weird. Occasionally in winter, you’ll have days with this cool thick fog that comes on the city, and you get used to driving in fog,” Smith said. “But this isn’t fog, it’s smoke.”
Catholics in both Oregon and California are facing the loss of homes, property, and possibly loved ones to the fires, Smith said, while Church-sponsored charities gear up to assist both with immediate needs and in the long-haul recovery to come.
“I do know that there’s been some wonderful charity in some of our parishes where they’re organizing to take people in, to care for people, to provide a place for them to evacuate,” Smith said.
“As always in a major tragedy or crisis like this, you sometimes see the worst in people (like looters), and then you see the best in people,” Smith said. “Suddenly the neighbor who you just sort of said hi to you, now you’re trying to help them in a way that you wouldn’t have done before. These things bring out a lot of the inherent goodness in people to help support one another in moments of crisis.” Deacon Rick Birkel, executive director of Catholic Charities of Oregon, told CNA that it was too soon to know the full extent of the damage of the fires, as some of the worst-hit areas were still inaccessible by government agencies.
“In some of the worst impacted communities we haven’t even been able to get in,” he said. “The National Guard, Red Cross, no one has been able to even get into those locations yet, it’s still too hot.” “There is this grave concern that we’re going to find mass casualties and we’re preparing for that possibility,” he added.
Birkel said as with most crises, the wildfires were going to have the worst impact on the poor and the vulnerable.
“The people who are being impacted by the fires are very diverse, of course, but you still have the farm workers out working in this weather…they’re some of the most vulnerable people not able to shelter, they’re out working,” he said. Prior to the fires, Catholic Charities had been working on the streets to serve the homeless, “which now is just so much harder, but also so much more urgent because all these people sleeping outside are already vulnerable and now…the only way they’re going to get off the street is through the emergency room,” Birkel said. Catholic Charities has been partnering with agencies such as the Red Cross as well as local parishes to provide food and shelter during the fires, Birkel said. In both the short and long term, one of the biggest needs is going to be housing, he added, and so they are raising funds for a privately-funded emergency shelter as well as for longer-term housing solutions. “Housing is the critical, fundamental intervention that people need when things get really bad, whether it’s COVID or fires or whatever,” he said.
Catholic Charities USA also has a wildfire relief fund accessible online, while the Knights of Columbus in Oregon are also taking donations for relief, The Catholic Sentinel, a local publication, reported. In California, where wildfires have been burning since August, relief efforts are still “just barely scratching the surface” as more needs arise and the level of damage is assessed, Ashlee Wolf, development director for Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fresno, told CNA. Through partnerships with The American Red Cross and The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities has helped with both food and clothing distributions for these fires, Wolf said, though one of their current needs is for more volunteers to help organize the donations.
In an email to the Board of Directors of Catholic Charities of Fresno, shared with CNA, Wolfe noted multiple ways the charity has already responded to the immediate needs of those affected by the fires, including a call they received about the La Quinta Inn in nearby Clovis, which has become a shelter for numerous survivors and firefighters. “After speaking with the hotel manager, we learned that the hotel was housing 23 families displaced by the fires, as well as 20 firefighters who are staying there in between shifts. Many of the families were brought there by (a local) bus and had no transportation to be able to get to any of the other resource centers with access to food. Each room had a refrigerator and microwave, so Jeff and I called one of our most reliable food vendors, purchased two car loads full of microwavable and non-perishable food, and personally delivered it to the hotel for those evacuees and firefighters staying there,” Wolf shared in the email.
Judy Dietlein, President of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s Sacramento council, told CNA that while she has experience working in wildfire disaster relief, this year has been a “unique disaster” in that the fires are so spread out, making relief difficult to centralize.
“In the (2018) Camp Fire, there was a disaster recovery center in Chico. Everybody went there and found out what they needed to do and FEMA was there and we were there. And it’s not the case now. There are these little offices here and there,” she said.
“These are so spread out that it’s really hard to find the people to get them the help that they need. They are being evacuated to hotels versus shelters, as they would be in the past,” she added. Dietlein said the council is “doing what they can” right now, including handing out gift cards, helping with resource referrals, and taking down contact information of the displaced. She said while St. Vincent de Paul isn’t necessarily equipped to be a first responder agency, they are gearing up to help people in the long-term, in the months and years after the fires when they are trying to rebuild their lives. Something the case workers of St. Vincent de Paul have learned from working with previous wildfire survivors is that they need a way to keep all of their paperwork organized, Deitlein said, and so they have been handing out binders to the survivors. “(Wildfire survivors) talk to so many people. They get names of people, they get forms to fill out from insurance…so they’re handing out these binders so they can put all of their important papers in one place. And that came out of experience from the Camp Fire,” she said.
When asked how Catholics can help, Dietlein said that prayers are always welcome. She said when it comes to donations, money is usually the best, because it can be difficult to organize donations of physical items like food and clothing. Bishop Smith asked Catholics to specifically pray that the weather would change in Oregon to be more favorable for the firefighters. The area was expecting rain Sept. 15, but then that got pushed back a few days. “Pray for the weather to change. Oregonians complain about the rain, but we could do with a bunch of it right now. And pray for the winds to die down to help the firefighters,” he said. “And pray for people affected by the fires, for their wellbeing and consolation. And then there are also other ways that you can support folks financially or with other resources…we will need to get a better sense of what the needs are and what people have lost through all this to help them move forward,” he said. He also encouraged Catholics not to despair, even though things may seem heavy right now. “We’ll get through this,” he said. “The Church has been through a whole lot worse than this, but the thing is when you’re in the middle of the storm, most of the time, all you comprehend is the storm. And when you’re in that storm, it’s like, when will this ever end? Because all your energy is focused on getting out of the storm and getting through the storm alive.”
“You lose sense that it was calm before the storm, and there’ll be calm afterwards and life will go on. There is a bigger picture, but we have to get through the storm first, and help people get through the storm and serve them as best we can.”
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
.
Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
.
Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
.
I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?