NEWPORT, Tenn. (WATE) — A Newport, Tennessee, woman received a new house on Saturday after her home was reduced to rubble in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in September.
Janet Sams lives on the Pigeon River in Newport and lost everything in the flood. God’s Pit Crew, a Virginia-based non-profit, gifted her the brand new home Saturday morning.
“I’ve seen this happen on TV, but for it to happen in real life to me, was amazing,” Sams said. “I was ecstatic, it was overwhelming, I’m still on this ‘woo!’ This is mine, this is mine, this is my home, and I worked so hard for it, like I did the other one. But this home, I worked through God.”
Randy Johnson, director and founder of God’s Pit Crew, said the group arrived in Newport the first week of December to begin rebuilding the home.
“It’s just an incredible blessing. It’s something I think, just as humans, it’s something we should all want to do, and that’s to help our neighbors, our friends and people we don’t even know,” he said.
The project was completed in just a month. Volunteers with a New Jersey-based ministry called Servant’s Heart also travelled to Tennessee to help with construction. Doug Greenfield was one of those volunteers, and is also a licensed master plumber.
“It becomes personal, it becomes very personal when you see houses gone here, houses wrecked,” Greenfield said. “On TV, things are just pieces of lumber, where here it’s someone’s life was truly affected.”
This was the case for Janet, who’s called Newport home for most of her life.
“I love it here. My husband and I started building our home here, and this is going to be my home. His is in heaven and I’ll join him one day, but this is where we wanted our home,” she said.
Despite all that she lost, she never lost faith.
“I got news for everybody, I’m not a hurricane victim, I am a survivor, and I’m here to stay,” she said.
In addition to building Janet’s new home, God’s Pit Crew’s Immediate Disaster Response Team has served over 95,000 volunteer hours following Hurricane Helene, helping with relief efforts in Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Virginia.
