Church reflects on two years after Hurricane Milton
By Ashley Wiehe
Director of Advancement
It was Oct. 9, 2024, just two weeks after Hurricane Helene had hit the Florida Gulf Coast. Families were displaced from their homes and communities were devastated. But for Grace Lutheran Church and School in St. Petersburg, Fla., the worst was yet to come.
Amid supporting their church families and the cleanup in their community, they hadn’t given much thought to the warnings of another hurricane headed for the area. They had taken normal precautions — sandbags and evacuations where necessary — but the church was not in a flood zone so the danger seemed minimal.
“At Grace, we’ve never really thought too much about it,” said the Rev. Kevin Loughran, senior pastor at Grace. “The wind has always been a concern, but Grace has always been a safe place to stay from a hurricane because we’re high. We really shouldn’t have the threat of being flooded.”
However, Hurricane Milton changed everything.
“Right away I could see this was like no other storm we had ever had before,” Loughran said as he saw reports coming in from his parishioners.
During a 24-hour period, more than 20 inches of rain had fallen in their area — 14 of those inches came in a four-hour timespan. They experienced 120 mile-per-hour wind gusts. They lost part of their gym roof, and that was only the start.
The drains in the courtyard were clogged with debris from trees, and soon, their offices, classrooms, cafeteria, and sanctuary began to fill with storm water.
“Hurricane water is not like normal rain. It’s polluted in and of itself, … and whatever that water touches is compromised,” Loughran said. “The water very quickly got high enough that every single one of our classrooms or spaces that surrounded our courtyard got filled with water anywhere from a foot and a half to three or four inches.”
Grace is located a few miles inland in St. Petersburg — a city surrounded by water on Florida’s Gulf Coast. It sits at the tip of a peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Also, the church and school campus is large. It’s an outdoor space where students, staff, and church members can walk outside between rooms. However, that caused a problem because most of their spaces were then connected to the outdoors and the floodwaters.
“Our sanctuary was completely full of water, probably four inches of water,” he said. “We have 24 classrooms on campus. Only nine of them were untouched.”
The situation seemed dire, but God’s plans were bigger.
Within 24 hours, there were more than 100 volunteers on campus helping with cleanup.
“They tore all of the flooring out of the church. They raised all of the pews up on blocks. We started the process of tearing all of the flooring out of those 15 classrooms that had water in them,” he said.
They also had to purify the air in these spaces before they would be declared usable. They were in the middle of school and holding weekly worship services.
“We basically needed to bring in these plumbing machines that pull impurities out of the air, shut the sanctuary down for 48 hours, then have the air quality tested. So early the next week, that space got declared usable again,” he explained.
They closed spaces and got to work. All in all, Grace missed one weekend of worship services and got their school back up and running after two weeks with some creative rearranging. Everything was operating — albeit in an adjusted format — by Oct. 28.
“We were able to move our whole early childhood program into the gym with partitions,” he said. “We were able to use our sanctuary and set it up in such a way that we could have five middle school classes meeting in the sanctuary during the week at the same time.”
However, the next challenge came — the price of the restoration. Numbers were staggering and seemed out of reach. But again, God exceeded their expectations. The LORD brought together contractors, city permitting personnel, and volunteers to put the project within reach. They even worked with FEMA for disaster assistance.
“I don’t know how we did this — by the grace of God only,” Loughran said. “We were having an unbelievable outpouring of donations. … Somehow, some way, we were able to keep going.”
Connections began to form with their church members — contractors, tree removers, city permits — and it was all coming together quicker than expected.
“By the very end of the school year, at that point in time, we had somehow done almost $800,000 worth of work, rebuilding work, on the $400,000 that we actually had,” he said. “Oh, wow. You see God’s hand, right?”
People were cutting rates and doing work gratis, and donations were being made monetarily and for supplies and equipment needed for the facility.
“A lot of these spaces hadn’t been touched since the 1980s, and all of a sudden, the spaces that are being rebuilt, we’re going from flickering lights that needed ballasts replaced to brand new state-of-the-art LED lighting,” he said. “It was remarkable to see.”
Today, two years later, the church is on the cusp of its 100th anniversary — quite a feat for a Florida church. But they are still in the midst of restorations. Some spaces still haven’t returned, and some spaces had just become available.
Teachers and staff are celebrating their spaces, so happy to be in an upgraded facility. Some of these teachers and staff had felt the devastation at home but were brought together to help restore the church facility. Just two years ago, they were working in closets and in rooms without walls. Today, they are celebrating the community, and the campus, they rebuilt together.
Even just recently, Pastor Loughran was working with FEMA for the final work on their funding. It’s been a long road, but in reflecting on those days, it had a positive impact on Grace as a whole.
“God has blessed us. It’s just brought our community together,” he said. “(Our church and school) are unbelievably knit together. It’s really a remarkable thing.”
Pictures hang in a common room on campus. They show the water that crept into the sanctuary. The classrooms lost to the flooding. The campus changed by one night. But it was a night that brought a community together — far beyond the church and school community.
Pastor Loughran had one word to describe it: “Miraculous.”
Photo provided by Grace Lutheran Church: Today, the sanctuary is fully active and serving its congregation. They are still feeling the effects of the hurricane from two years ago and are working toward full restoration.