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.
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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

How Does the Disaster in Japan Compare

Our experience as an organization has been with hurricanes, localized flooding, and river flooding. Our partner organization, Hilltop Rescue has done some wild fire response. As devastating as these events have been, we are fairly well prepared with what to expect. I propose, however, that faith based organizations, informal relief organizations like ours, and even the big government supported organizations have a long way to go to prepare for what has happened in Japan.

The scale and diversity of challenges in Northern Japan is beginning to be illustrated in this current CNN lead story:

• The official death toll, rising every few hours, reached 1,886 on Monday [3/14/11]. But that didn't account for thousands of bodies Japan's Kyodo News said had been found in the hard-hit Miyagi Prefecture on Japan's northeast coast.
• At least 2,369 people were missing Monday, the National Police Agency said, and the number of dead is expected to go up as rescuers reach more hard-hit areas.
• Public broadcaster NHK reported that 450,000 people were living in shelters.
• "It's just adding insult to injury," said Ryan McDonald, an American living in Kitakata, about 60 miles west of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. "The earthquake was horrible. Then The tsunami was horrible. And that's not enough. Now there's a nuclear fear."
• The town of Minami Sanriku -- about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Pacific Ocean -- had morphed into a massive pile of wood that used to house 20,000 residents.
• About 15,000 people have been rescued, Kyodo News reported Monday, citing Prime Minister Nato Kan. Among them was Hiromitsu Shinkawa, a 60-year-old man from Minami Soma who was swept away with his house, Kyodo said. A Japanese destroyer found him floating 9 miles off Fukushima Prefecture

This is all very disheartening to me. It seems the bar to measure what constitutes a disaster keeps rising over the last decade. Each new worst-case-scenario is increasingly more extravagant than the last. The fear I have for what God may be preparing us for with our relief work is rising with each of these events.

The best quote I've seen applicable to this is from someone I am acquainted with from my gridSMART cybersecurity work at AEP. As Andy Bochman of IBM said "Good work rarely gets done in the fetal position."

We have work to do in analyzing this present crisis, even if we aren't applying it directly right now. How would we respond to a similar earthquake in California where "63,000 buildings had been damaged, more than 6,000 of them obliterated?" How would we respond to a tsunami, most likely in Oregon or Washington State, but anywhere along the West coast where all structures within 20 feet of sea level, miles inland are washed away with only minutes notice if any? How would we respond to a similar cascading failure of nuclear reactor control systems that could happen nearly anywhere in our country including Ohio? And how would we respond to all of them simultaneously as is required right now in Japan?

I don't have the answers. All of us thinking through these questions and working together to find answers, however, could be of tremendous benefit if our nation were confronted with similar catastrophes.

Your thoughts? How do we function as His hands and feet to victims of so extraordinary a circumstance as this is shaping up to be?

Servants Unite!
John McGuire
servantsunite.blogspot.com

Ohio and Japan

It appears flooding in Northern Ohio over the last couple weeks is bad, but not the concentrated, large scale problem we had in 2007 in Bucyrus and Findlay. Yet, the water still hasn't receded many places so there may yet be a need for Servants Unite to mobilize. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief is engaged in the Marion County area. I'll pass on word as that materializes.

There is little our organization can do for Japan. This triple whammy of worst case scenarios, major earthquake, 23 foot tsunami, and now the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns appears to yet again set a new precedent for how bad a disaster can be. There are two organizations I have worked closely with who I can recommend over the usual suspects for handling money. IDES and WFR have been active in international disasters. They are affiliated with Christian Church and Church of Christ respectively. The people at IDES are good acquaintances and I am personal friends with the organizers at Whites Ferry Road. These are the sweetest people in the world yet they maintain strict oversight over how funds are spent. They will stretch a penny to make copper wire, yet those projects they support are very effective at shining Christ's light in the darkness.

We can help support their efforts and pray, pray, pray, pray, and pray some more.

Servants Unite!
John McGuire

Lots of flooding in Northern Ohio

If you would like to help, please contact me by email or on my cell phone (listed to the right).

Snowfall from last week melting with rainfall last night has created major flooding in Findlay, Lima, and some other Northern Ohio towns. I don't know what I can do or organize or whether people are interested in going up to help the cleanup. For that matter it's still too early to judge whether the areas of damage are wide spread enough to require help from outside the local communities to clean it up.

Areas marked with purple on this National Weather Service map are where the need for help will be greatest. I'll keep my eye on the needs, but I'm not going to be able to go up and do a survey till the weekend.

This does not appear to be as widespread or severe as August 2007 when we spent several weeks working in Bucyrus area and other groups worked in Findlay. During that response, we made contact with EMA directors for several counties and ended up working with Tim Flock in Crawford County (Bucyrus). We helped a local resident with some disaster relief experience set up intake for residents with needs and organization for volunteers during the initial effort. FEMA ended up declaring a disaster area and the process became more formalized after a few weeks and was taken over by our VOAD. In Ohio, that's Lutheran Disaster Services.

I get information and updates from LDS, Mennonite Disaster Services which is active in the area, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, and Methodist Disaster Services. I'll post any information from those organizations or any additional information I collect here.

Please pray for those who have lost property and vehicles in the flash flooding, that they will find help that they need and find that Jesus is looking out for them.

Servants Unite!
John McGuire

I need some local disaster relief volunteer help this Winter in Bucyrus

I need the help of a few people to work on a project with me back up in Bucyrus. This is an opportunity to help a family that has sacrificed much to help their community after flooding in late 2007. Servants Unite sent a number of volunteers up and I spent two weeks helping Linn Ash organize intake, assessments, and volunteer teams following unprecedented flooding across Northern Ohio. Here's a reference from the blog from the first day we worked there.

Now Linn's family needs our help. They are accustomed to being the helpers, not the helped so the need for assistance is uncomfortable for them. Linn has strong faith, but physical issues are getting to be a problem. Since our work there, her family has found they have a couple different, rare genetic diseases. The symptoms of those are racking up some disabilities for Linn, her husband Tim, and their kids. Their two story house is getting to be a problem.

They were able to buy a ranch house this week. It needs a couple doors widened and maybe a ramp built as well as normal pre-move in prep. Then we need to help them move and prepare their current home for sale. That will involve some additional destruction/light construction work. Selling season starts in Spring, but I'm sure they'll want to have that stresser taken care of as soon as possible.

If you think you'll be able to help me on Saturdays or Sundays over the coming weeks, or you can lead work on a week day, please send me an email. I'll add you to my list and keep you notified as work dates solidify so you can determine whether you can help those days. If you can, please pray for the Ash family and for God to use His people to meet their physical needs. There may also be need for some materials. If you'd like to help out with those, please email me as well.

Thanks guys!

The Gathering

We've sent several crews to Chalmette, Louisiana to work with The Gathering church plant. The community center/ex bowling alley has been a long time coming, but they are on their final push to get it up and running.

They need help. If you can take a team down before the end of the year, small or large, who knows how to help with their needs or be a good assistant to someone who does. Here's the latest update from Aaron and Matt:

We wanted to send a quick update regarding the progress at the Gathering Place...i've been working with multiple small adult teams to finish this by the end of the year. and then it became "Project 52"--with God's help, would it be possible to finish the place in 52 days like He did with Nehemiah. We are in the 4th week and have certainly seen answered prayer--the workers He has provided, the materials donated, money provided, and safety afforded as well. Matt, our pastor, sent this update out, so I'm passing on to you....thanks for reading and loving us.

Really, can words sum up these pictures. It is amazing to see what has happened in just a few days. Who would have thought toilets would have been such an exciting picture. I will have a lot more pictures to show next week.


By the grace of God,we are moving so quickly in the completion of this building. It is amazing to watch the church in action, being used by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Praise God, all Glory to HIM.

9/16 Ohio Tornadoes

Looks like there are a couple of small property damage areas after last night's storms. If anyone knows of others, or people who need help cleaning up storm damage, please get in contact with me.

Athens area
An apparent tornado overturned several trailers at the Pine Aire Village mobile home park in The Plains. It then destroyed part of the high school football stands and press box where a girl's soccer game was in progress. Fortunately all participants and spectators got to shelter before it hit. Final damage I have been able to find then is an auto repair shop on the east side of Athens. Nobody was killed, but a few people had minor injuries from being tumbled in their mobile homes with their belongings.

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You can see a local photographers images from last night here

More news stories will be available at Athens newspapers' sites
Athens News
Athens Messenger

Wooster Area:
Damage appears to be limited to some treas and the Ohio State University Agriculture Research and Development Center. Again, nobody was killed and there was only 1 very minor injury reported.

The Daily Record Newspaper Site


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Delaware County
Olentangy High School lost some gym roof. Again, no injuries and crews were working on recovering the roof overnight and this morning.

Earl

This is a large and powerful Katrina like storm. Likewise the damage it has the potential to cause is similar. If it skips off the outer banks and heads back out to sea, land impact will be minimal, but it's track continues to trend towards land. Running up the coast could subject the entire New England seacoast to hurricane force winds and some surge. While the worst case is not currently in the forecast, if it were to come up the Hudson River, Chesapeake, or other estuaries like Katrina came up the MRGO the result would be catastrophic.

After Katrina, the press tracked down worst case scenarios that actually could be much worse. Among these is a Category 2 or stronger coming into New York City. Transportation, communications, and power would all be destroyed in an area of much higher population density than New Orleans was.

PRAY!

If the worst happens this weekend (another Labor Day weekend storm?) I'll have instructions for how we can help.

Anyone feel like a road trip Friday night?

Servants Unite!

Pakistan flooding disaster is REALLY bad.

This CNN article outlines the suffering currently in Pakistan. Not that there is much our organization can do, but there are a massive amount of people without homes, food, water, and the basics.

Roughly 4 million people are homeless from mammoth flooding that covered much of Pakistan for three weeks. Hundreds of health facilities are damaged or destroyed. Millions are at risk for deadly waterborne diseases from the filthy flood waters.
Officials estimate the death toll between 1,500 and 1,600, but Kapadia says he thinks the numbers could skyrocket as water recedes and more bodies and animals surface.

Five Year Anniversary

Five years ago the McGuire family took our first beach vacation to Gulf Shores, Alabama. If you told me then that I'd know the highways down to and around the Gulf of Mexico like the back of my hand, the geography of which city is where, who lives in any of those places I would have never believed it. I and many of you have now been to so many of the beaches, churches, and restaurants, worked in people's homes, gained lifetime friends, and have come to feel we have a home and family in the lower latitudes of our country.

Five years ago hurricane Katrina converted the beach road along Gulf Shores where my family had played with the fishes a few days before into open ocean. Floating casinos in Mississippi were made beached hulks. Hundreds of thousands of homes, churches, businesses, and livelihoods were washed away by the waves and the water along with several thousand people's lives.

Thousands of us now know our way around post disaster Slidell, Bayou La Batre, Chalmette, New Orleans, Mandeville. We will never forget the people who's homes we have cleaned out and rebuilt, the friends we worked with, and the brotherly love we experienced working in New Orleans.

In those 5 years, we have also served in Iowa, Houston, Galveston, and Bucyrus here in Ohio. Some of us have gone on to other mission work as a result of our experience and have engaged others. I'm sure, like you, my outlook, priorities, and life is now quite different than it was before my involvement in relief work with you brothers and sisters.

The work has slowed and we've gone back to our lives for the most part. I'm back to working a full time IT Security job again. I'm at AEP downtown working to secure the gridSmart project. Our hearts for missions and relieving the suffering of those stricken by disaster, however, are still strong.

With the projected path of Hurricane Earl inching closer and closer to North Carolina and the New England states, we are reminded of the mission God put before us 5 years ago. Then we saw thousands of people in dire circumstances. Third world calamity conditions, right here in the USA. We know we risk a storm like Katrina, Ike, or even the localized flooding we've seen in Nashville and other places this past year will continue to require the skills we've built over the last 5 years.

Servants Unite, though dormant currently is ready to spin up when the need for volunteers to serve in disaster relief rises again. I remain committed to continuing the mission with you whether we need to send volunteers to Cape Hatteras next week or Miami next year. Keep monitoring the blog for updates and needs.

John McGuire
President
Servants Unite!

Disaster update from Lutheran Disaster Services

This seems like a sound assessment so I thought I'd share. I have to note, however, that our friends in Bayou La Batre and at The Gathering in Chalmette, Louisiana are always looking for financial and volunteer assistance. Their ministries are going to be particularly in demand and can be that much more effective in this oil response in their communities.

Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

We continue to monitor the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and pray fervently for all those who have been affected. Indeed, while the long-term effects of this tragedy will be felt by all of us, for those whose lives and livelihoods have been directly impacted, the needs for help are acute and overwhelming.

Earlier this week, Jessica Vermilyea, disaster coordinator with Lutheran Social Services of the South, took part in an ecumenical listening tour into the bayou marsh areas of Plaquemines Parish in southeastern Louisiana. As part of this group, Jessica heard from fishermen, business owners, and other local leaders about how the oil spill is affecting them, even as many of them continue to struggle with recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

We have received numerous inquiries from Lutherans around the country about volunteering in some capacity along the Gulf Coast. At this moment, only people who are being specifically trained and equipped by BP are being permitted to work directly in the clean-up process. This has much to do with the health and safety risks of handling the crude oil. In the future, opportunities may emerge for other types of volunteer roles, and each state in the area is receiving names of volunteers who are interested in helping. To register, follow one of the following links:
• Louisiana: volunteerlouisiana.gov
• Mississippi: volunteermississippi.org
• Florida: volunteerfloridadisaster.org
• Alabama: servealabama.gov
Several questions have been raised about whether a national funding appeal should be launched in response to this tragedy. Our commitment has always been that we will find the most efficient ways possible to use financial contributions to meet unmet needs that arise from disaster. At this time, BP has pledged that it is their responsibility to pay for all costs related to clean-up as well as to reimburse those who have experienced a loss of income as a result of the spill, and anyone seeking to file a claim can do so directly through the BP Web site. Given the unique nature of this situation, we will not be seeking funding for this response.

Instead, we lift up the unfolding needs of those in the many states affected by flooding and tornadoes so far this spring, including as recently as this past weekend in Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. I ask you to consider giving a gift to support the responses getting underway in places like Yazoo City, Mississippi and Nashville, Tennessee. Click here to give today.

In the mean time, we will continue to listen for emerging unmet needs along the Gulf Coast and for meaningful ways that we might engage there. As we do, I ask for your continued prayers for the beautiful land and people of the Gulf Coast as they struggle to overcome this continuing tragedy.

In service,
Rev. Kevin A. Massey, Director


Lutheran Disaster Response
Bringing Help and Hope...
Phone: 773-380-2748
Fax: 773-380-2493
Visit us on the Web at LDR.org
Are you on Facebook? Join the cause.

North West Ohio Tornado Damage from Sunday Morning

The Toledo Blade has an article on the damage.

Welcome to Hurricane Season 2010

A weekend tropical cyclone got a head start on Central America where the death toll is rising and a sinkhole of dimensions difficult to believe has opened in Guatamala City after mudslides from the torrential rains. I have a note into our friend Tim Hines who works missions in Honduras to verify all is well with their work there.

The US National Weather Service predicts an active season in this article

“If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared.”

NOAA also has a FAQ on how a Gulf of Mexico hurricane may effect, or be effected by the oil plume. For those of us who have already shoveled crude out of people's living rooms in Chalmette from the Katrina damaged refinery, this will probably be more of the same.

It's hard to believe it's been nearly 5 years since we began the post Katrina cleanup. Though the past year has been quiet we're already to respond if needed again this year. When the need appears to be there, I'll investigate whether Servants Unite can be of assistance and get the word out to you all scheduling trips. Till then, be praying for a lighter than predicted season and for opportunities to be Christ to people in their distress.

If you are wondering if volunteers are needed in Tennessee...

I don't believe so yet. Though it sounds pretty bad around Nashville in the press this morning, here's the update I got this morning from Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. If I get more info, I'll post to servantsunite.blogspot.com

Storm System Sweeps Across the Central and Southern States

Storms over the weekend caused tornadoes and flooding in Tennessee, killing at least six. David Acres, Tennessee state disaster relief director, says, “The cities of Nashville and Lavergne, Tenn., have been declared disaster areas.” The American Red Cross (ARC) has opened shelters, but the shelter population has remained small. Acres says, “We have been in contact with ARC, and they have not needed a Tennessee disaster relief kitchen.” Tennessee Baptist Convention has also been in contact with emergency managers, and they stand ready to assist with debris removal or mudout of houses.

The storm system also left a path of destruction in Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi and was moving through Kentucky and Georgia late Sunday evening. One death was reported and a state of emergency declared in Arkansas. Three deaths were reported Sunday morning in Mississippi. Pray for Southern Baptist volunteers working to help their neighbors in these states. As daylight comes and the system continues to move east, many will be out assessing damage, running chainsaws, and cleaning up flooded homes.

Prayers for Entire Pacific Basin

This quake in Chili is a MAJOR disaster. At magnitude 8.8 it is 1000 times the power of the Haiti quake. Read more here. Nine foot tsunami waves have been measured near the epicenter and are traveling out through the entire ocean. They are due into Hawaii soon and anywhere with a Pacific coast is subject to waves higher or lower than this when it gets there. This is a disaster in progress. Prayers people get away in time and that loss of life is minimized across the world and near the epicenter, a very heavily populated portion of South America.

Project Opportunity to benefit Haiti

Southern Baptists Disaster Relief is a well oiled machine. They are collecting Buckets of Hope to ship to Haitians who are homeless, hungry, and generally miserable. More information about the things they have going on are here

Be keeping up on www.lifeline.org for their needs and trip plans. Commercial flights are resuming into Port Au Prince soon and there will be opportunities to go work if you are interested.

I have friends who have been and one who is there this week. This is typical disorganized disaster relief work, but to a whole new degree. If you plan to go you will want to be sure you are working with a well established organization who knows the lay of the land well and has connections with the community down there.