CityView Magazine

60 | November/December 2017 Key local contributors to the office's work have included the United Way of Cumberland County, Haymount United Methodist Church and Cumberland Community Foundation. e latter recently awarded a $60,000 grant so the office can hire a second construction manager and buy another work truck. Helpfully, Kusumoto just retired from the Army where he specialized in disaster relief and managerial assistance. His new job is a labor of faith and love. e former lieutenant colonel lives in Fayetteville so the job isn't a trek for him. But Mathis, who started working in residential construction in the early '90s and joined the Methodist disaster-response team full-time in March, lives in Benson. He drives to Fayetteville every day. Evans lives in Apex. He stays in Fayetteville during the week and goes home weekends. Evans, who retired several years ago from real estate sales, had long been involved with disaster recovery mission work through his church. He finally decided it was something he needed to do full-time. "None of us are in it for the money," he said. "It's a calling. You've got to want to do it. It's not fun, necessarily, living here all week and going home weekends. But it's still better than sitting on that sofa at home and having God be ill with me." Most of the disaster relief organizations that poured into the area immediately aer the hurricane have moved on from Cumberland County. Evans said the primary charitable organizations still active here are Fayetteville Area Habitat for Humanity, whose efforts are focused on the dozens of homes that flooded in Habitat Village near downtown Fayetteville, and the Methodists. In neighboring Robeson County, which was hit much harder by the hurricane, the N.C. Baptist Men's disaster relief organization remains deeply involved with rebuilding efforts, along with the Methodists and other groups. Evans said the Methodists have a strong tradition of spending as much time as is needed to help survivors rebuild aer a disaster. ese efforts oen go on for years. So far, seven Cumberland County homes have been repaired with the help of the Methodist disaster-response office. Fourteen more are being repaired now. Forty more are on the waiting list and that number will likely grow. How long will the Methodists' Hurricane Matthew recovery operation continue in Fayetteville? "We just don't know," Evans said. "ree things will determine it – if we completely finish all the houses that need to be rebuilt. Or if the money runs out. Or if the volunteers stop coming. If any of those three things happens, it shuts the operation down in this area." At the same time, he notes, the Methodists still have volunteers coming into eastern North Carolina to help rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Irene in 2011. "We're not necessarily the first ones in every time there's a disaster," Evans said. "But we're usually the last ones to leave."

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