Hurricane Dorian
Dear Parents,
As you may have heard, hurricane Dorian has hit the Bahama’s as a historic, category 5 storm. It is also proving very difficult to predict its probable path. But, most models now indicate that its next likely landfall is here in North Carolina sometime later this week, Thursday evening or early Friday morning. By that time, the storm should reduce to a category 2 storm, which is far less dangerous than a category 5 storm, but still very serious (for comparison, last year’s damaging storm Florence was only a Category 1/Tropical Storm). Also, given the width of this enormous storm, we are preparing for storm level winds, rain and possible flooding as far north as the Raleigh Durham area. Here are the actions we are taking:
· With an abundance of caution, and to avoid the snarls of a possible coastal wide evacuation on Tuesday and Labor Day traffic today on I-40, we are evacuating the full Wilmington Zone today by noon. (This includes areas in Southport, Wilmington, Hampstead, Jacksonville, Leland and Wallace/Mt. Zion). Evacuated missionaries will stay for now with other missionaries in the Raleigh-Durham area.
· Tomorrow morning we will evacuate the Kinston zone (this includes the areas of Morehead City, Harker’s Island, Havelock, New Bern, Washington, Woodington, Kinston and Greenville). Evacuated missionaries will stay for now with other missionaries in the Raleigh-Durham area.
· Missionaries in all other zones are on alert to move to a designated “Safe House” later in the week if needed. “Safe Houses” are sturdy homes of members, on good elevation, where no teenage or young single adult children of the opposite sex live.
As a reminder, every missionary here (including our most recent missionaries) have had formal training for all of these emergency preparedness procedures. Cars are filled with gas, 72 hour kits with extra food and water are on hand in every apartment, lists are established for what to pack for evacuating missionaries, and we have a redundant communication systems in place to do our best to stay in touch with everyone if there are power outages.
My prayers (and I trust yours) are that this storm will pass by the state entirely. But, if it does not, we are well prepared. And, having done our part and continuing to do our part, we can also count on heaven’s intervening hand. I witnessed this last year with Florence. I testify to you that the Lord loves his missionaries and is watching over them this week . . . as always.
I will provide you with another update tomorrow morning.
Faithfully,
President Holland
Kimball and Sister Cobb get to room with Sis. Bell (Kimball's companion from the MTC) and Madison Clark (Kimball's friend from St. George) until the Hurricane is over.
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