Tuscaloosa Bound Thursday May 12

Please ask to have this announced at your church Sunday morning and distributed through church emails, facebook pages, tweets, twits, or whatever works.

You can be serve
Servants Unite Alabama Team 1 will leave Thursday May 12 at 3:00pm from Westerville Christian Church 471 College Avenue, Westerville Ohio 43081
We will arrive at University Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa around midnight central time
We will work long days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. There may be an option for some to return Sunday evening. Depending on the situation we will continue to work into Wednesday afternoon, then head home. That will get us back at Westerville Christian after midnight Wednesday night.

We'll know more after we spend a few days down there, but there will likely be an opportunity for other teams to go and help in the coming weeks.

You can help from here
Please ask your churches to be collecting the following items that we can take to distribute or get supplies nearby if available:

• Personal care items - soap, shampoo, razors, deodorant, tooth brush, toothpaste, etc.
• Baby care items - diapers, wipes, bottles, formula, etc.
• Water and gator aid
• Tarps
• Gift Cards - Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart (there aren't krogers or giant eagles in Tuscaloosa ;-)
• Cash - to help with travel expenses, food, and other needs in Tuscaloosa
• Prayers

These things need to get to Westerville Christian. If you have a lot and can't get it there, please let me know and we'll arrange a pickup. If you collect more after Thursday, that is OK. There will probably be additional teams and I'll be sure to get what we have delivered to the area whether or no and it will be needed.

There are a lot of places we could work, but we have a relationship with this church who has housed many of our volunteers overnight and fed us all so well on the road for Katrina relief. It's a small honor to be able to help them in their time of need.

Like after any large disaster there is much uncertainty. These trips are always like that. We will know a lot more this time next week after being on the ground and working for a few days. Everything we learn will appear on the blog here.

You should plan to bring:

• Air mattress
• Sleeping bag
• Pillow
• 6 days worth of grungy clothes (something clean to wear home)
• Sturdy shoes/boots with thick soles. Steel toes may be beneficial
• Basic personal care needs -toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, deodorant (this is not a beauty contest)
• Work gloves
• Dust Masks (N95 are best)
• Tools - chain saw, sawzall, pry bars, shovels, sword (Bible :-)

As always, the most important job is to listen to people's stories and help them with their needs, emotional, spiritual, and physical.

Thanks for serving.

Servants Unite!

John McGuire

Volumes of Tuscaloosa Tornado Information

Jay Guin at University Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa has been putting together a lot of interesting and useful information. Rather than try to re-create that

See his blog here. I'm sure I'll reference it more as we move forward.

Specifically he references a radar map of the tornadic storms crossing Alabama. Rather than a line of storms, it's a chain of individual storms. I see 15 distinct bow echos that indicate the cells are Tornadic.

There's also a concise map of tornado paths.

University Church is now accepting volunteers. Tentative departure date for a team is next Thursday evening, May 5 from Westerville Christian Church at 6:00. This may well change as we work out details, but that's something to shoot for. Several have already volunteered to go.

Jay has a list of items needed near the end of this blog post.

We're Going....

I don't know where and don't yet know what we need, or who is available to lead teams. Start letting me know if you are interested. Phone and email are to the side and you can reach me on facebook too.

PLEASE PRAY FOR DISCERNMENT. There's too much to absorb and sort out right now.

I know of 4 bad off locations hundreds of miles apart where we have connections.
View Larger Map
University Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa is just a block north of the tornado path as is the church of another friend, Church of the Highlands, there who is starting up a relief effort. Homewood Church of Christ in southwest Birmingham has also hosted teams. My friend was the preacher there till a month ago. The building is fine, but there is "death and destruction" all around. The state VOAD is apparently not engaged, but that may change. No other organizing group has surfaced to lead unaffiliated groups like ours in intake and volunteer organizing like Hands On Nashville did after the floods there last year. There is a likelihood the damage and loss of life is much greater than has been reported. There is also a water shortage as the storm took out several water storage towers.

Monrovia Church of Christ in Huntsville wants to start up a "Tammany Oaks" style relief operation there. Tim Hines called with that info an hour ago.

Chrissy Wyatt, one of our Hilltop Rescue buddies in Chattanooga reports that areas 10 miles east of there and down into Ringold Georgia are really bad as well.

I can't decide where to go first, or whether I personally can go at all. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief groups report on their fb page that they are deploying all over the region. Information should start to gel in the next couple of days, but like Katrina, nobody knew the whole story till a week and more after the event.

You can help here now by organizing your churches to collect cash, gift cards to home improvement stores, tools, and probably water. Getting money and gift cards in will be easy. Water and tools will require some drivers and trailers.

Could really use a source for a double axle enclosed trailer for things like this if you know of any.

Servants Unite!

John McGuire

Tuscaloosa Situation

This is a blog by an Elder at University Church of Christ, just north of the tornado's path in Tuscaloosa. A couple good posts of information now and more worth following to come I'm sure.

Record Tornado Outbreak

Yesterday was a very bad day for a lot of people. Numbers are still coming in, but hundreds are dead, thousands homeless, and the quantity of tornadoes yesterday, over 170, has far surpassed the record set 37 years ago.

The worst tornado outbreak in U.S. history occurred in April 1974, when 148 twisters touched down in 13 states over a 16-hour period, according to the National Weather Service. The agency said 330 people died and 5,484 were injured in a path of damage that covered more than 2,500 miles.

The worst of these was a mile wide F5 that destroyed most of my wife Melinda's home town, Xenia, Ohio.

Yesterday's rush hour tornado that hit Tuscaloosa just south of the University of Alabama was the same kind of beast. It had been on the ground for 2 hours and continued through more towns after Tuscaloosa. There are a number of videos of the tornado churning through town on the Alabama Fox 6 station.

The path was just a few blocks south of the University Church of Christ where we've had teams stay on the way down or back from Katrina relief trips. I've traded a couple texts with Sandy who organized our stays. Knowing this church and their proximity to ground zero I expect they'll be working with members and the community to help recovery. While tornadoes usually do not require outside assistance, our relationship with this congregation and the scale of this damage may mean we are needed. I'll post updates here and on facebook