Mississippi man's personal experience brings him to Florida to help Hurricane Ian recovery

Mike Dohm became an expert at natural disaster cleanup after his own home was flooded in 1995.

“I’ve got a lot of scars, I’ll put it that way,” he said.

Since then Dohm has been called on to assist in cleanup efforts after hurricanes, floods, and tornados, primarily in the southeast region, including Hurricanes Ida in 2021 and Katrina in 2005 and the Kentucky floods at the end of July.

The Carriere man was once again called on to lead cleanup efforts in southwestern Florida after Hurricane Ian caused damage to thousands of homes in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area.

He left his home in Mississippi on Oct. 6 and has been working nonstop at his church's cleanup headquarters in the Golden Gate community of Collier County, Florida.

Crisis Cleanup:Group helps homeowners get through the muck after Hurricane Ian

Dohm is the Slidell, Louisiana, stake president for the Church of Latter-day Saints, which encompasses an area of southeastern Louisiana and south Mississippi. The stake was dissolved in 2007 after many church members relocated after their homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. It was brought back in 2017, as more people returned to the area.

LDS church's efforts help in disaster recovery

An organization called Crisis Cleanup brings people and organizations together to help after a natural disaster. Anyone can request assistance for getting blue tarps on roofs, damaged furnishings and water-logged carpeting out of their homes. The cleanups allow homeowners and residents to get ahead of the recovery process and hopefully stops further damage from occurring in the homes.

The work is done through volunteers, like those from the LDS church, which boasts a worldwide membership of around 16 million people, the community and other groups and individuals interested in lending a hand.

Dohm was called on to help the Florida LDS church in its response to Ian recovery.

"Our church has an area emergency response committee for geographical regions," Dohm said. “That committee helps us make assignments. Once we determine where we’re going to have command centers set up, those people on the committee are deployed to go out with the local members of the church.”

The Ian cleanup effort will operate through Oct. 28.

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Around 1,000 volunteers, most of whom are local, have been working every weekend since Ian struck the area Sept. 28, often setting up tents to camp out near the church and returning to their homes in other areas of the state. Other volunteers who live in the affected area are volunteering despite having damage in their homes as well.

“We have people who are the impacted members of the church as well as people from outside the area to come in and work together,” Dohm said.

'This is a sort of triage effort'

The emergency response committee is able to be onsite throughout the response time, to respond to requests for aid and gather donated supplies for the following weekend's cleanup.

“That’s my job — to be the oversight manager,” Dohm said. “This is in a sense a sort of a triage effort. The committee basically marshals an effort whenever there’s a storm of this magnitude and other cataclysmic events where we need people.

“We come in at the very beginning and help people so they can begin to get their lives back,” he said. “And there will be people that come in after. But we try to link arms with the community as well as with other members of the church in order to be able to do this."

Volunteer Lindsay Williams, also of Naples, helped fellow church member Michael Remien clean up his house after it was severely damaged by Ian's floodwaters. She said she wanted to help others get back on their feet after the storm, even though her own house had minor damage.

“My church — the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — is very involved with service efforts and there’s a lot of people who really need help,” she said. “I’m very glad I belong to a church that has that organization set in place and prioritizes helping others so much.”

Because Remien was able to get his house ready for repairs he was able to volunteer to help others, joining the cleanup as a team leader.

“They can use all the help that we can give them,” he said.

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Crisis Cleanup works with over 1,800 groups to provide aid

Crisis Cleanup has worked with more than 1,800 organizations to clean up over 80,000 homes since the organization started, at no cost to the homeowners.

Joe Lindsay, stake president for Collier and south Lee counties, said the LDS church works with Crisis Cleanup to get volunteers out in the community immediately after disaster strikes and continues to provide aid for weeks. It also gives LDS members the opportunity to share with the homeowners and residents what the church is about.

“The church is really good about mobilizing assistance,” he said. “We cooperate with people in the community. We have some people who aren’t in our church who are helping to be on our teams with us because they just love to do it.”

Do you have a story to share? Contact Lici Beveridge at lbeveridge@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @licibev or Facebook at facebook.com/licibeveridge.

This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: Mississippi man aids in Hurricane Ian recovery in Florida