First Day of Work in Bucyrus

I want to commend the volunteers from several churches with Servants Unite as well as local groups from around the area who pitched in today. As usual we plan how the first day of work is going to happen and find we didn't anticipate everything. The volunteers were eager to perform the tasks assigned and gracious with the frustrations that came up. They were 200% more efficient than even I expected! They all left hot, sweaty, dirty, and tired so I believe, by that measure, they had a good day's work :-) Nick pointed out that even people they checked on who didn't want help were comforted to know that someone cared enough to offer.

The Madison County EMA director was in Bucyrus the last two days and spent the day with the leadership of the fledgling volunteer effort today. I found this note from her on my email when I got home:

Thanks for all your help - Servants Unite is truly doing God's work! The group you had here today was amazing!!
God bless, Krista

Linn Ash, the county volunteer coordinator raved about our volunteers as well. We need more! We'll have more work for you to do beginning Monday.

The EMA directors I've met up there have been great to deal with. Several from nearby counties are in Crawford county to assist Tim and his team. They are sharp, show genuine concern for the people they are charged with protecting, and are constantly brainstorming for ways to do their job better. Not the government functionaries we have seen at the federal level.

None-the-less, they have a finite responsibility in this. Recovery will take a long time. Even if a federal declaration comes as most expect we know from our experience that it will be months or years before the local governments and residents see financial relief from federal grants.

Tonight, most flooded homes in Bucyrus have been cleared of their furniture and belongings. A couple exceptions waiting on insurance appraisals are all that we could find this afternoon. Others will inevitably materialize, but the majority have been cleared by residents, friends, and neighbors since Wednesday when the water receded.

Left to do in many of these homes:

• Remove wet drywall, cabinets, carpet, and insulation. Most don't realize this is required to stop mold growth.
• Pressure wash and treat water exposed wood with bleach solution.
• Shore up sagging floors and minor structural problems. Basement wall problems have condemned over 60 homes and state inspectors may have condemned more today, but I've witnessed that the most wavy floor won't get it that designation.
• Replace drywall, floor coverings, cabinets, paint, and wallpaper.
• Replace appliances. Furnaces, water heaters, stoves, refrigerators, freezers, washers, and dryers.
• Replace furniture.
• Replace personal belongings that are replaceable.

We are getting requests for appliances already as people who are displaced move into new places. Specifically today I have a request for a stove. I need people to help arrange Good used appliance donations and transport them to Bucyrus as well as a dropoff location. I can also accept gift cards to Lowes or Home Depot. I'll turn those over to the new Crawford County Flood Recovery Group for equitable disbursement to needy residents. These are a great way to donate to people in disasters. You can put a message with the card and be assured it is spent on things required to rebuild a household.

Servants Unite is also low on cash to perform relief operations. We need to purchase tools for volunteers to use for recovery, cover some transportation costs, and directly support needy storm victims in their recovery.

To donate to Servants Unite or send money, gift cards, or household appliances for storm victims, refer to the "Supplies Needed" link on the web site at www.servantsunite.org Please specify the intent of your donation to go to storm victims directly, volunteer operations, or as needed.

Volunteer operations will resume Monday. The Crawford County organizers are taking tomorrow to spec new jobs for the volunteers we have coming through next week. If you'd like to join them, let me know!

Here are a few pictures from today's work.

Bucyrus Volunteers Meet Here

We'll be in our volunteer coordination office at 7:30am in Bucyrus. I invite SU volunteers to show up around 9:00

1313 East Mansfield Street, Bucryus, Ohio 44820

View Larger Map
Look for the Dominos Pizza sign.


We had 80 people show up for the local church, civic, and community leaders meeting today! The local groups appear to be turning out well.


See you in Bucyrus tomorrow! Or when you can come up.

Bucyrus Needs for Donated Items

Bleach - to demold mucked houses. There is none available here
Diapers - will go to ODJFS to distribute. Victims are out of diapers
Mops
Buckets

Power Washers
Coolers

Bucyrus Thursday Update

First, I need some experienced volunteers to assist in assessing potential cleanup jobs tomorrow in Bucyrus. If anyone is available, call me on my cell, 614-404-8610, before noon.

The meeting place is not solidified yet for Saturday. I have a location at a downtown church, but it isn't optimal and I'm looking for a better option still tomorrow. We will meet at 9:00 Saturday, but I'll have to get you the definite address via email tomorrow.

I spent the day with Linn Ash, the newly anointed EMA Volunteer Coordinator and Tim Flock, the directory for Crawford County. You'll like them, they are the kind of people we've grown to respect for their leadership in disasters.
We spent the day plotting how we were going to prioritize work requests and validate they are ready for volunteers. We also connected with the Red Cross and Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services. We talked to a few churches, checked out a few homes, and got the lay of the land.

Tomorrow we are having a meeting of church, civic, service organization, and other leaders in the area to ask them to mobilize their constituencies to volunteer in their community. We will be surveying the first jobs to be handed out on Saturday and solidifying a base of operations. Without taking on too much, we are going to check on other counties' progress in volunteer cleanup management and find a way to help them get going as well.

Volunteers from around the region are needed in the effected area. While flood water has receded in Bucyrus, Findlay still has high water and as I write this, more than an inch of rain is predicted from storms entering the area now.

Some residents are cleaning out their homes and a few have insurance to cover it, but there will be many who need our assistance.

The tote board in the Crawford County EMA office of residences damaged looked like this by the end of the day:
Affected - 255 some damage
Minor - 542 mostly flooded basements, water heaters, and furnaces
Major - 179 flood damage in the first floor of the house
Destroyed - 59 structurally unsound
Total - 1032

More homes collapsed today as water was pumped out of basements and the pressure outside the walls caved them in. Prayers for these families and all the others left homeless please.

The Major and Destroyed homes are 10% of the residences in this relatively small town. Some other statistics. ODJFS estimates 200-300 homes in the county are unlivable, 500 families or 3000 individuals are homeless and staying with relatives. that's 7% of the county's population. They also note that the storm victims are disproportionately elderly and poor. The Sandusky River crested 17 1/2 feet above average making this a 100 year flood event. The water hasn't been recorded that high since 1912.

My phone is Cingular/AT&T and does not work within 5 miles of Bucyrus... So if you don't get an answer, please contact Linn Ash at 419-561-1110. I'm hoping to have a Verizon phone up tomorrow to use while I'm up there. Special thanks to Mitchell Ratalczak at the Verizon Wireless store in Westerville (614-563-0863) for his assistance. Give him some business if you would!

Bucyrus Work Lining Up

I need 4 volunteers to work in Bucyrus tomorrow. The task will be helping Crawford County EMA to qualify requests for assistance and start to organize volunteer workers. This is not physical work and offers a lot of contact with storm victims. They have up to 840 requests for assistance, but need to gather considerably more information to begin prioritizing them and assigning volunteers to the task. More requests will be coming in. Call me to sign up for tomorrow at my cell phone, 614-404-8610. No such thing as too late.

I'll also need the same or replacement people for that task through the weekend and into next week. Please sign up for that via john@servantsunite.org. We will start out working in Emergency Management in the Crawford county Courthouse at this address.

I am looking for local churches to work out of and through. We want to work with a local church so the people we help know where to go for support when we are no longer there personally.

Specifically I need a local non-instrumental Church of Christ who will help distribute relief funds and supplies from relief organizations of that affiliation. Accounting for those donations would become a job for an elder of the church. Resources are available, but I need someone to take that responsibility.

We need to build cleaning kits to donate to victims. Here is the inventory I pirated from Nashville Disaster Relief. I recommend filling the bucket with the supplies covering it with a towel and holding it in place with a rubber band (or a lid if there is one).

• 5 Gallon Bucket
• Heavy Duty Hand Brush
• Heavy duty scrubbers (Brillo pad)
• Woolite
• Clorox cleanup
• Heavy duty cleaner (Degreaser)
• Sponges
• Playtex gloves
• Waterless hand gel
• Formula 409
  
• Pine Sol
• Comet
• Bathroom cleaner
• Soap
• Rags
• Flashlight & Batteries
• Dust Masks

EMA is asking for church organizations to serve meals for the community and volunteers. This could be distributed in the neighborhoods, and available at a church building or defined location.

Volunteers will need to come prepared with tools till we can get with a church and purchase some.

Volunteer coordinators are needed. These should be experienced volunteers from Katrina work who can give a week (or whatever) to lead day workers in demucking homes.

We are not really prepared for this financially. Our current funds are at $3,665.32. I'm working on getting funding for some of this from other disaster relief orgs, but Servants Unite will most likely incur some expenses in this. I am already purchasing magnetic vehicle signs, a display banner, and will need "yard signs" to advertise who volunteers or storm victims should contact in the affected area.

We will need some funds coming in quickly. You or your church can donate through the paypal link on the Servants Unite web site under "Supplies Needed". You can send checks to my address which is also on that page or deposit them directly to our account at Chase. I can give you that number over the phone if you need it. We are functioning under non-profit status applied for, but do not have an answer back from the IRS. This means that donations should be tax deductible, but I can't tell you it is guaranteed.

More updates from ground zero tomorrow.

Ohio Flood Relief Wednesday Update

Nine Ohio counties, Allen, Crawford, Hancock, Hardin, Putman, Richland, Seneca, Van Wert and Wyandot are all under a state of emergency; up from the 6 last night.Just heard from Troy Blair, youth minister of Northland Church of Christ (Team 1). He’s working in Bucyrus cleaning out his sister’s basement. He’s met with the EMA directory for Crawford County who I will be speaking with shortly as he is intent on getting help into their area as soon as possible.

Troy reports a lot of residential damage in Bucyrus where Marion and Shelby have more commercial and government building damage. Since our initial connections seem to be in Bucyrus, we will plan on working there Saturday and Sunday. Friday is a maybe. Additional days and work locations will be determined as we assess needs, progress, volunteer turnout, and volunteer availability.

We will arrange for accommodations for volunteers who live further away from the area at a local church as we did after Katrina. While these plans aren’t defined yet, contacts are happening to solidify this aspect of the response.

Presently I have 4 volunteers scheduled for Saturday. I need RSVPs from you via email to john@servantsunite.org ASAP. I need to know how many people we can offer to the effort so that I can estimate how much work we can commit to. I need to hear from you now for us to be effective this weekend and beyond.

I also need you to engage your church leadership and get this message out to your church email list. 500 people will get this email, but their church congregations represent thousands of potential volunteers. This is an even easier opportunity for an introduction to the type of mission work we have been doing on the gulf coast. Our friends, families, coworkers, and church families should have the opportunity we have had to witness God at work through our efforts and we have many many families hurt by these storms that are in need of our assistance. I know how addicted you all are to this work. If you think back to your trip to the gulf coast, you’ll have to join in.

I am available to discuss this work with anyone who has questions. Have them call my cell number 614-404-8610.

We will require standard mucking tools:

• Flat shovels
• Wheelbarrows
• Plastic bins to carry wet debris up out of basements
• Boots
• Gloves
• Safety glasses
• Hammers
• Wonderbars (prybars)
• Old clothes

More updates later or tomorrow as plans are firmed up

Servants Unite!

We are activating in response to Ohio flooding

We are getting more info on Oklahoma flooding and will try to send a team in a week to two if volunteers are willing to go. It appears the need will persist. The need there is severe and we are needed there just as we were after Katrina.

First though, we have trouble right here. Six Ohio counties are under a state of emergency from up to 9 inches of rain yesterday which has flooded many towns here. I expect you’ve seen the video on the news this evening of the flooding and coast guard helicopters plucking people out of the flood water. More rain is in the forecast for the rest of the week.

The town of Shelby, in Richland County has people sleeping in a shelter tonight in the High School on the West side and an elementary school on the East side. The black fork river has cut the two sides of town in half.

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Bucyrus in Crawford County is also flooded making national news tonight. Many of us have traveled through there up route 4 on our way to Cedar Point. The Sandusky River is still rising there and won’t crest till tomorrow, IF no more rain falls. Many are in a shelter in the YMCA there tonight.

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In Mansfield, the post office flooded and the news isn’t covering additional areas.

Van Wert, Allen, Harding, and Wyandot counties are also under a state of emergency.

Only 1 in 10 households in flood prone areas tend to have flood insurance and the most needy people don’t tend to have the insurance. There will be many who will need lots of outside assistance getting their homes put back together and replace their belongings. Some will likely lose their homes altogether from collapsed foundations and basement walls destroyed by the rushing water.

Plans are not yet defined, though I already have at least one volunteer to work this weekend. I will be contacting Senior Citizen’s Centers, the Red Cross, Mayors, Emergency Management directors, and local groups coordinating volunteers that we can partner up with to offer assistance in the areas affected.

You are needed for the kind of kingdom work we have been doing in the gulf coast, but this is right in our back yards. We can serve all day giving people hope and come home to sleep in our own beds after a hot shower, thankful that we have both.

Please forward this note to your church email lists, friends, and family who would be willing to give up their weekend to help our neighbors.

I will get more info out to you on email and via the blog over the next couple days to firm up those plans.

Servants Unite!

Team 27 Video

Glenn Needham of Sunbury United Methodist Church put this together for their congregation from the footage he shot working in Bayou La Batre in July.

View it on YouTube