I have come to realize God had a plan for me. He just had to get me ready for it. I had a great and fulfilling career as a mechanical engineer, but in time I realized corporate life was always about the bottom line. I knew about Mennonite Disaster Service pretty well my whole life, but I had never taken the time to volunteer.

We were studying The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren through our church. It talks about the purpose of life. It’s really all about God. I thought, I have an opportunity to do something different. So, why not do it? 

Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita happened, and MDS was looking for volunteers. I thought, this is what I need to do. I took early retirement from John Deere and signed up for nine weeks in Louisiana with MDS. This would start my 18-year journey with MDS.

Hurricane Fiona hit Atlantic Canada in September 2022. We had our biannual MDS Ontario unit meeting on Saturday, the day of the hurricane. We agreed that if people in Nova Scotia needed our help, we would help them. 

Wednesday, I landed in Halifax. We toured from New Glasgow up along the North Shore. We saw downed trees, tarps on roofs. 

We ended up at the Arisaig lighthouse as the sun was setting. It was such a vibrant cloud formation. The oranges, the blues, the dark clouds. You again realize God’s creation is magnificent. All the destruction, but another day has happened. What are you going to do with that day? 

Thursday morning, we made two calls to the Antigonish municipality and got a meeting at 9 o’clock. We explained we were there to help people who can’t help themselves: elderly, single parents, ones with health issues. They said, how soon can you get volunteers here? MDS Atlantic had volunteers ready the next morning. 

Friday we met with the United Way, Cape Breton Regional Municipality and other emergency response agencies. The damage was worst in the southeast part of Cape Breton. We were directed to concentrate on Glace Bay, a depressed mining town area.  I’d never seen as many trees knocked over. It was like pick-up sticks. Everything was mangled. The root balls pulled right out of the ground. Roofs missing or slowly buckling from a tree lying on top of it.

I had been in that area a couple of times. My first job out of university, I designed conveyor systems for coal mining in Sydney, right where this hurricane happened. I realized how big the coal and steel industries were. Everybody worked in them if you weren’t a fisherman. 

Because of environmental issues and the cost of coal, they closed the mines. The steel industries that needed coal closed down. They had fishing restrictions. You had an economy that depended on all three industries, and they were all basically gone. 

If you worked for the mine long term, you could buy a company house, built as temporary housing. These houses have been around for a hundred years, handed down generation to generation. On the older ones, the roofs are fairly flat. For them to fly off tells you this is a hundred-year storm. In one case, the roof lifted off and they didn’t even hear it because of the wind noise. They fly off like a Frisbee. They land in an empty field, or on somebody’s house or car. 

Our call for volunteers was for skilled chainsaw operators, people skilled in roof repair and people willing to do the labor. They were so pumped about being able to put their faith into action. 

Christian Aid Ministries, one of our partner agencies, met an elderly homeowner who was legally blind. They asked if we could help her. She had a fairly big lot. She didn’t know how to handle all these trees down. A neighbor got a $40,000 quote for removing their broken and uprooted trees. Another neighbor borrowed a friend’s backhoe to help.  We cleaned up three yards in one day.

My volunteers are so enthused that they work faster than you expect. The toughest part is trying to stay one step ahead. Often I would get a call from my crew leader: “Hey Nick, those jobs you gave us are all done. What do we do now?” We had 135 tree cleanup jobs and 28 roof repair jobs. We were there a total of 10 weeks. I was there seven.

The hugs and thank yous from our clients are precious. It tugs at your heartstrings because you understand what they’re going through. Just listening to their stories is sometimes the healing part. 

I drove back with a crew leader from Saskatchewan. We talked a lot about the people we met in Cape Breton — their poverty, the things they still have to deal with and what we wished we could have done. I’m glad I went. It’s one of my favorite experiences because of the people I met and worked with.

People say climate change is not happening. I have enough experience to say it is happening. When I started with MDS in 2006, my main responsibility was to recruit volunteers to send to the U.S. We didn’t have many disasters here. We would have the odd hurricane, windstorm, flood or fire. The change in 10, 20 years is night and day. 

God doesn’t create disasters. He created this amazing world where the laws of nature look after nature. You have a system that reacts. Storms will spawn off oceans because of higher heat. And unfortunately, mankind, who created this problem, has to live with the consequences. Future disasters are a given. It’s going to get worse, so we better be ready. 

Houses can’t withstand the storms we’re getting. You have more disasters, and the insurance rates go up. People cannot afford it. You spend your money on food, not insurance. We as a society are not set up for that. The National Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster management model is common in the U.S., where you have different groups working together to help a community. Developing something like that in Canada is important. 

My hope for the future is in God. God is in charge. We can try to slow down climate change, but we will continue to be affected by natural disasters that are out of our control. Hopefully, this awareness of how disasters affect real people will inspire volunteers. 

God gives us the opportunity to help people. That’s what I find amazing about this kind of service. We can walk with God in our clumsy way of doing things, but we can be a presence. We can do something if we are willing.

Nick Hamm of Vineland, Ont., was the MDS Ontario unit chair when Hurricane Fiona hit Atlantic Canada in 2022. This article, told to Rebecca Rogerson, was produced for the Climate Disaster Project, an international teaching newsroom based at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. The project works with people whose lives have been touched by climate disasters to share their experiences and ideas for solutions.