7 YEARS LATER, CLERGY STILL HAUNTED BY FLOOD

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 16, 1993                   TAG: 9301160279
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
7 YEARS LATER, CLERGY STILL HAUNTED BY FLOOD
Many clergy members in Virginia and West Virginia who helped survivors of the flood of 1985 are still traumatized by the disaster that killed 54 people, a psychologist who resurveyed them said Friday.
"We still think and talk about it; the flood is etched in our memories," said a Roanoke minister, one of 40 interviewed for the follow-up study.
The clergy members were involved in all aspects of flood relief - rescuing people, cleaning up, providing food and shelter, organizing relief programs, raising funds and, above all, giving emotional support to victims.
But they put off rest and often bottled up their own feelings while they comforted others, said Lennis Echterling, a psychologist at James Madison University and volunteer for the Virginia Disaster Response Network.
"They don't take care of themselves," Echterling said in a telephone interview from his office. "The implications of the study is that they're hurting as well. They became wounded healers."
During the first year of the November 1985 flood, which left thousands homeless and caused more than $900 million in property damage, Echterling and two assistants interviewed 44 clergy members in Western Virginia and southwestern West Virginia.
In the first survey, 24 percent of them said they had problems with anxiety, flashbacks and bad dreams about the flood. Sixty-six percent said they felt guilty about not doing enough.
In the interviews done this past fall, 5 percent still had problems with anxiety, 12 percent have flashbacks and 15 percent have bad dreams about the flood. Thirty percent still felt guilty.
"The flood is a benchmark - everything is either pre-flood or post-flood," one minister said. A condition of the survey was that they and their churches not be identified.
"Around the anniversary of the flood, I go into withdrawal and pretend it doesn't exist," another said.
Echterling said he found the clergy members' most difficult and biggest contribution was to help flood victims make sense of what is often called an act of God. Victims wondered whether they were being punished for something they did or being sent a message to "clean up my act," he said.
"In the midst of disaster, with people cleaning up and grieving," he said, "clergy members took care of practical and highly emotional tasks at the same time they were struggling with a fundamental theological question: Is there a God, and if there is a God, why does he allow this kind of pain and suffering?"
Today, 75 percent of the clergy continue to do long-term flood relief work such as helping flood survivors deal with the bureaucratic demands and giving emotional support to church members still grieving for loved ones killed in the flood.
"The tremendous demands for long-term recovery work led to burnout for some of the clergy," Echterling said. "We have to help the helpers by recognizing the unique role that clergy can play and the hazards they face after a natural disaster," he said.
Clergy members need to take advantage of retreats available for relief workers and form support groups among themselves, Echterling said. Psychologists and psychiatrists involved in disaster intervention need to be supportive and not competitive with ministers, he added.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB