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church members filling out the Red Cross
staffs. Other organizations involved in disaster
feeding and sheltering were the Salvation Army and the
Southern Baptist.
As the power came on, the people began to
return to their homes to begin clean up operations.
Everyone found a mass of tree limbs in their yards that is going to
entail a massive debris removal operation. The Oklahoma
Emergency Management Agency has asked the Methodist and other
organizations for volunteers to remove the debris from the yards to
the street curb. These will be different from the Early
Response Teams but will be organized from spontaneous untrained
volunteers (SUV's) for the tasks of moving tree limbs only.
The Methodist Early Response Teams (DERT) will also be utilized and
will focus on handling chain saw work and roof tarping where roofs
are damaged.
The
District Superintendent (DS) and the District Disaster
Response Coordinator (DDRC) of each district have been
asked to contact pastors and coordinate with local
churches to form volunteer teams (SUV) and request early
response teams to prepare for activation (ERT). The
response need will be during for a period of several of weeks
after Christmas. Teams will have a designated leader and is going to work for one to three days.
Each person will complete liability form beforehand and all normal
training requirements will be waived for the debris removal.
The Conference disaster team will be managing the
SUV and ERT teams in coordination with Oklahoma
Emergency Management. Removal of downed power lines,
which is mixed in with the tree limbs, is the main reason for the
delay in the start of operations. Once
that hazard is eliminated teams of spontaneous untrained
volunteers (SUV's) with be activated along with early
response teams (ERT's).
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