Saturday, May 07, 2011

Volunteers Flood Tuscaloosa Today

A story from Tuscaloosa today describes traffic jams of volunteers of untold numbers showing up to help. Disaster relief is always fluid and never predictable.... We'll keep watching and plan accordingly.

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Why is This Tornado Outbreak Different?

While out of the area response is not usually necessary for tornado events, this NOAA report released today shows an unrecorded density of tornadic storms last week.

305 tornadoes suspected, 190 on the 27-28 timeframe that included most of the Alabama damage. The previous 24 hour record was April 3-4 1974 @ 148 that included the infamous Xenia tornado.

This NOAA map of storm rotation highlights the severity of the storms, widespread effect, and the most damaged areas highlighted in bright yellow and red for the greatest rotation.



Here is the article explaining the map.

Reschedule Alabama Team 1 - May 12-18

I updated the information on the original blog post for our first trip. More people were available to go a week later, it gives us more time to get things in order, and that'll put us there when the local volunteers may start to wane so we can fill in some of the need. We may look at touching some outlying areas that may have been hard hit, but neglected and may start becoming more apparent by the time we get there.

You can find good first hand information about the changing conditions there at these sites:
http://oneinjesus.info/ as well as other thoughts by Jay Guin

Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Updates

Lots of info here and here. As always, their crews are moving into the areas effected in large numbers.

Monday, May 02, 2011

Response Schedule

I'm rethinking the "leave Thursday 5/5" plan in favor of going a week later. Several have expressed an interest to go, but later. I'm also having a hard time getting organized with competing priorities.

Opinions and council from anyone reading is appreciated.

Other considerations, the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi are at an all time high flood level and extreme measures such as blowing levies to sacrifice rural areas in favor of population centers are being implemented.

When it rains it pours right?

Servants Unite!

John McGuire

Indications of the need for counselors on disaster relief missions

This CNN Story

"It's just an amazing, emotional roller coaster for these people," he said. "Once we were able to take a break from it and think about it, it was heartbreaking."