November 29, 2001 | Read Time: 2 minutes
By Elizabeth Greene
In the name of God, Salvation Army officers have offered unwavering comfort to rescue workers at the site of the September 11 attacks in New York, reports Worth magazine (November).
While it has not raised nearly as much money since the attacks as the American Red Cross, with which it is often compared, the Salvation Army has provided much of the fuel that has kept the relief operation going, says the magazine.
Within an hour of the attacks, the group sent about 200 officers “in their epaulet jackets and blue caps” to New York, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania — the three disaster sites. They were joined by 5,000 Salvation Army volunteers.
In New York, the focus of the Worth article, the group set up 21 feeding stations to provide hot food, energy bars, water, soft drinks, toothbrushes, and aspirin to firefighters, police officers, and other rescue personnel, and served 300,000 meals in the first 72 hours of the crisis alone, the magazine says. Officers performed religious services outdoors, and a brass band, “tears streaming down its members’ faces,” played “Amazing Grace” for the workers.
While the group is best known for its work with the homeless, the addicted, and the poor, its commitment to disaster relief was strengthened after Hurricane Andrew, which struck in 1992, when the Salvation Army decided to stay on in Homestead, Fla., for three years. The group plans to stay in New York and Washington “for as many months as it takes to clear away the devastation,” according to the article, and to assist the families of the victims for years, if need be.
The Salvation Army is actually a Protestant church in which the officers are all ministers, and religious dedication “is the constant electricity on which the organization runs,” says the magazine. Such faith allows the group to pay its officers tiny salaries, and it keeps members going — even at a site as gruesome as the World Trade Center — because they feel they offer a badly needed service. Says one counselor: “We bring a calming presence.”
The article is available at http://www.worth.com/content_articles/articles
.cfm?id=4668.
