'All of us want to be home,' say Southwest Va. folks still in shelters a week after snow

CLINTWOOD, Va. – Syarra Counts, 9, and Cody Mullins, 10, are “storm friends.”

That is how children describe the special bond they’ve forged with people they did not know a week ago, before the region’s worst snowstorm in a decade knocked out power in Dickenson and other coalfield counties, forcing them and their families to seek shelter at emergency facilities in schools, medical centers and churches.

Storm friends are people like Counts, Mullins and 33 others who spent Christmas Eve sleeping in from cots on a basketball court inside the Clintwood Baptist Church. They have migrated from shelter to shelter in the past week – some with heat, some not – sustained by food bought and prepared by the Red Cross and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. Most have not had a shower in a week.

“We do a lot of goofing off-ing,” Syarra, a girl with large blue-green eyes and a toothy smile, said in the church’s sanctuary. She sat on a pew with her father, Noah Counts, a 50-year-old disabled coal miner and self-described “expert cot setter-upper.” Cody, fiddling with a handheld “Guitar Hero” game, sat next to them, stretching an arm around Noah, whom he called his “best friend.”

The smiles belied their ordeal.

Just about everyone at the Clintwood Baptist Church started out sleeping at Clinchco Elementary School, which had no heat. They were moved to a senior citizens center in Clinchco the next day, which had heat but no water. The next stop, on Tuesday, was at the Baptist Church, which had heat but no water until Thursday afternoon.

When the Red Cross set up the shelter at the church, they welcomed about 80 people in need of a cot and a hot meal. The organization is operating six other centers in Wise and in Buchanan County.

Mike Yates, a church volunteer, teared up as he described how Syarra Counts had steeled herself against the disappointment of no presents on Christmas.

“She came in here this morning and she didn’t think she got anything,” he said. “She was trying to keep her chin up and cheer up the other kids,” he said.

But Santa did come Friday, in the guise of a Red Cross worker with a fake white beard. Kathy Sevilla, a volunteer firefighter and president of Dickenson County’s Salvation Army, was Santa’s helper elf.

Sevilla hasn’t been home in over a week, ever since the snow began to fall and wreak havoc throughout the region. She and her son set up the first emergency shelter in Clinchco. She isn’t going home until everyone’s power is restored, she said. By Friday evening, more than 6,000 people in Dickenson County, and an equal number in Buchanan County, were still without power.

But Sevilla stole away briefly Thursday for an emergency shopping trip, hitting Walmart, Kmart and Magic Mart to buy presents for the children at the Baptist Church. She was up until 4 a.m. Friday wrapping them, slept for two hours, and then arrived at the church by 6 a.m.

She is one of many who have answered the call of the thousands of people with no place to go, even as they themselves coped without power. William Robinson is another.

Home delivery
Robinson, a dentist in Clintwood and member of the Clintwood Baptist Church, was delivering lunches of pancakes, canned peaches, corn and spaghetti to elderly Clintwood residents and others who were trapped in their homes.

His first stop Friday was the home of Jane Mullins, an 81-year-old transplant from Washington, D.C., who moved to Clintwood a decade ago with her husband, who is now deceased.

“Everyone’s been affected,” Mullins said. “Our lives have moved a notch toward greater understanding.”

The storm took away Mullins’ heat and water, obliging her to read by candlelight, and making her consciously appreciate the warmth of a quilt, and the first taste of warm chicken broth delivered to her in a thermos.

Jamie McCoy, 79, also was warmed inwardly by the spirit of communal assistance. Soon after her power went out, a friend brought McCoy a gas heater, and helped her drape a large quilt over the entryway into another room to trap the heat where she needed it.

People like Robinson – whom she taught as a senior in her high school English class – have supplied her with a steady stream of food.

“This can easily spoil one,” she said.

A godsend
Noah Counts also has been spoiled by the experience, after a fashion.

He and his daughter hunkered down in his double-wide mobile home near the town of Trammel in Dickenson County. Realizing that power wasn’t coming back on, he drove them into town and they wound up at the shelter at Clinchco Elementary.

They were moved to the senior center – the warmest place they’d encountered for days. And though he’s had no more of a shower than cleaning himself with a warm washcloth, he called his experience at the Baptist Church a “godsend.”

“I can’t praise the people at Clintwood Baptist Church enough,” he said. “Human compassion I thought was gone, but it’s not. It took something like this to bring it all together,” he said.

On Christmas Day, his emotions got the best of him. For five minutes, he said, he let it all out: the frustration of not being able to celebrate at home, the concern for his young daughter, and the gratitude for all of the volunteers who looked after their warmth and meals, and even arranged for Santa to visit the children.

He sobbed again.

“The true meaning of Christmas has shown through,” he said. “But it’s not what you want for your child.”

His child, Syarra, said, “It’s cool having [Christmas] with other people, but in a way you just want to be home.”

“All of us want to be home,” Cody Mullins, her new friend, said.

When the lights eventually wink back on, and the bedraggled guests of the Clintwood Baptist Church do make their way home, they will have enlarged their circle of friends.

“I don’t know a stranger in here,” Kathy Meade, who lives in the Backbone Ridge community above Clinchco, said over lunch. “Just friends I hadn’t met yet.”

With Meade were her parents, her daughter and a few grandchildren.

“A lot of good things has come from this disaster,” she said.

dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558