Hurricane Ida Update: Wait, Pray, Give, and Prepare
Rev. Scott Parrish, Conference Disaster Response Coordinator, shares the following update on Hurricane Ida Response. (Updated August 30)
All eyes were on the Gulf as the powerful Category 4 Hurricane Ida made landfall Sunday. Our best response today is to pray, wait, actively communicate, and prepare. We'll have more news later from this developing situation as we coordinate with UMCOR & partners in the affected areas to add action to our prayers.
As always, don’t self deploy to a disaster area. Our agreement with our UMC conferences & UMCOR is to wait until we are invited as the locals coordinate their disaster response. Louisiana and Mississippi Conferences & UMCOR know we are available when needed. They’ll communicate with us when ready for trained ERT (which is generally weeks later as they'll first use in-conference ERT, then neighboring states ERT, and later extend the request to those of us further away).
We can put funding & cleaning buckets to immediate use at this time!
Contact Stephen Redmond by email at redmond09@aol.comto coordinate cleaning bucket delivery at our conference warehouse. Be sure to follow the directions and ensure every bucket has the correct items. The full list and assembly video are at https://umcmission.org/umcor-
Your financial gift to UMCOR is especially appreciated as our giving is flexible in application & offers high impact. Find an online giving option to UMCOR US Disaster Response at https://advance.umcmission.
To join a beginner's or renewal class for Early Response Team training please check https://www.ngumc.org/
We'll share more news in the days ahead as we have updates.
Grace & peace,
Scott