North Georgia Conference

Last month, an article by Rev. Mike Selleck addressed the first of two distinct phases after a disaster, early response and recovery, and the need for work teams to be properly trained beforehand. This article picks up where the March 16 article ended.

A few days ago, on April 4, between 2:00 and 2:30 AM, the leading edge of a cold front dropped hail and blasted of areas of Atlanta and northward with high winds. By morning there was lots of tree work to be done. The worst area hit was along the west slope and top of Hog Mountain that parallels east of I-985 where it is believed that microbursts hit two adjoining areas. There, the storm damaged nearly fifty structures and many trees including pushing one two-story home off its foundation, which then collapsed on itself with only one level visible. The fence around the back yard just disappeared.

This was just four days before the anniversary of the infamous “Dunwoody tornado” that traveled across Cobb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties and leaving an extensive trail of destruction during the late nineties.

For the first hours and days after a disaster, Metho-dist address this period as the “early response phase” which covers what FEMA calls their Emergency and Relief Stages. Emergency tasks include search and rescue, medical assistance to those that need it, assessment, and addressing hazards such as live power lines down, damaged gas lines, and fires. In South Georgia, this stage was finished in a day or two. For the April 4 storm, this stage was complete before sunrise.

A second front emerges at this point, which addresses the basic needs of survivors in terms of shelter, food, and clothing. The American Red Cross and Salvation Army paired with various church denominations are leaders in this area; however friends, relatives, and neighbors are active also and house many during into the relief stage.

The relief stage involves getting the home to a condition of “safe, secure, and sanitary.” This includes tarping roofs of homes and sealing broken windows against possible further damage from rain, cutting of debris, limbs, trees within our skill level, and clean up, which in the case of flooding involves removal of some of the wallboard to remove mold and dry out the structure. This dry out usually takes weeks to months to drop the moisture content of the structural wood to an acceptable level for rebuilding.

Around Americus, there is a small amount of relief work to be done and it appears that all of this will be completed by the end of the month. With the April 4 storm most of the tarping and sealing of structures occurred the same day. The next homeowner step is to get insurance claims processed so they can move into the recovery or rebuild phase.

Methodist teams that respond to disasters have to know what they are doing these days. For example, the debris hauled to the curb has to be sorted into four piles. This information and much more is conveyed through individual training, team preparation and the type of preparation your church desires.

One type is preparing your church for possible damage or destruction. Questions that need to be answered are: “What do you do about church records including membership, finances, etc? What do you do about having church services the next Sunday? Did you have enough insurance?”

Another avenue of planning is how to serve your membership and surrounding community following a local disaster? Can the church building house those without a roof as a Red Cross shelter or maybe teams coming into the area to help who could sleep in the Sunday School rooms or use the church kitchen to provide meals to people in the shelter or work teams or to set up an office to coordinate between those that need assistance and those who are coming in to help how the church building could be used to assist others.

Recent commitments that the Conference Committee has made are:

1. 50 Red Cross shelters in the NG Conference by the end of 2007

2. 2,500 trained NG volunteers by the end of 2008

3. A disaster coordinator for each church in the NG conference.

That is a big task just training and equipping and your help is needed.

On March 20, 1936, a rare morning tornado moved across North Georgia. At that time, there were no warning systems, no storm spotters, no weather radar, and a very limited weather prediction system. Before the end of that day, over 200 were dead and over 50 were later declared missing. That was the third worst storm in US history. There be will others in the future as this area has a sizeable probability. Other risks include structural and wild fires, winter storms, earthquakes, pandemic flu, and more.

It is just a matter of time before one or more of these risks will again impact our churches, our communities, ourselves. We need to be ready to help our membership, our neighbors, and those in the surrounding Conferences with whatever this challenge may be. Are you getting ready or are you ready?