Damage Revealed

Another Witness rose at 5 a.m. as usual, to go to work despite the heavy rain. But he had to turn back at the normal routes because the roads were washed out. He then thought of the congregation’s low-lying meeting place, their Kingdom Hall, and the congregation members living in the housing project around it. So he went back to get his wife and together they picked their way on foot to the area.

Blocked from further advance by the torrent, the couple went next to the Kingdom Hall for another shock.

Picture an attractive, newly remodeled, recently landscaped building, sitting peacefully on a street that you have driven on hundreds of times. Now visualize the same building​—the new addition literally torn off, the entire structure caved in, a large tree protruding through the belly of the main auditorium, and a great rent in one wall where a ten-foot-square (3-meter-square) piece of asphalt ripped through and out the other side. The familiar street is now a jagged, boulder-strewn canyon. The “lawn” is a lunar landscape. A woman checking on the Kingdom Hall sits down and cries.

Attention now turned to the Kingdom Hall. The decision was to dismantle it as soon as possible. So the offers of help were now gratefully accepted. About sixty workers would be enough to recover anything worth keeping and to assist those needing help with their homes.

But by 9 a.m. Saturday, there were about 150 volunteers, with a virtual army of vehicles at the designated site. An observing National Guardsman, astonished at the total dismantling job just four days after the flood, remarked that “no way” could the Guard get organized that fast.