Church offers free help to fire victims

The Barefoot Community Church is offering assistance to all fire victims. Insurance company representatives, home builders, and attorneys were on hand Friday to answer questions and provide legal advice free of charge.

Chris Figura said church leaders wanted to come up with a way to not only help some of their members, but non-members as well, many who lost their homes to the wildfire. “Share not just the Barefoot Community (church) members, but to every victim and that’s just what Barefoot Church does and we’re trying to reach out to say even if you don’t go to our church, we’re here to help you in any way we can.”  Figura said many fire victims were hitting road blocks and trying to figure how to take that next step when it came to issues like insurance, rebuilding, temporary housing, legal and financial assistance.

Jeff Wicker is one of dozens of people benefitting from the free seminar.  Wicker said he appreciates church leaders and members, some of whom are his neighbors, reaching out to help him. “Everything’s new, I mean there’s all kinds of stuff, you know I mean, you pay insurance, you hope you never use it, but then when you do it’s there, but luckily I had good insurance and I think everybody did and the main thing is every body’s safe. I’ve got my wife and my three kids and my two dogs and everything else we’ll have to replace, but it’s just going to take time.“

Barefoot Community church leaders said getting everybody in one place and inviting the fire victims to make the rounds, gives the victims the necessary information to get them back to a normal life.

Wicker said he’s lived in the Barefoot Resort community for almost a decade and last week’s fire isn’t going to chase him away.  He said the way the community and the church have pulled together brings out the good in everybody.  Just one of the reasons he said he plans to continue being part of the Barefoot community.

In case you were not able to make it to Friday’s event, but still need assistance, you can call the church at 843-280-1270 or visit the website at http://www.barefootchurch.com.