Saturday, January 12~ ERT Training~

I returned home from Delaware last night around 8:30 pm and this morning I was up bright and early at 6 a.m.  Sharon and I went to the Huntsville United Methodist Church, near Indian Lake, to take the basic training for the UMCOR Early Response Team.  This is a team of trained volunteers that go in after any natural disaster and provide help to the survivors.  Our mission statement is to provide a caring Christian presence in the aftermath of disaster.  The first ERT team was created in the mid 1990s but was revamped again in 2007 with new protocols to aid in coordinating our efforts with other volunteer organizations.  As team members we only respond after the initial disaster has occurred, following the EMS and only after being invited.  Our work would include:  tarping roofs, debris removal, chainsaw work, cleaning out flooded homes as well as helping to manage donated items, observing the survivor's needs and listening to survivors as they begin the healing process.  Deployments generally last 5 days with no more than 3 days working at the actual disaster site.  We are pretty excited to be a part of such a team and will be assembling our buckets and "go bags" of personal supplies to be ready for our first assignment.  We need to provide our own hard hats, gloves, breathing masks, safety glasses, boots, coveralls and some basic tools like hammers, crow bars, ect. Some of the larger churches have their own teams of 7-14 members and their own tool trailers but since Sharon and I are the only ones from our church, we will be placed with team members from other churches.  We also learned that when we go on site we take our own food, water and gasoline and sometimes even our own shelter (tents) because we must be self-sufficient, as we do not want to create more of a burden to the already devastated area. If you or someone you know would be interested in becoming part of this team you can contact me for more information.  You do not need to be a member of the United Methodist Church or any church for that matter, you only need a desire to help others in their time of need.  I think they said there would be another training session in March and I thought they said it would be held in Columbus.  The cost was $35 which covers your background check and materials for the class.  Our class was from 9-4 p.m.

I did get home with just enough time to take down our outdoor nativity set and enjoy at least a little of our unseasonably warm January weather.  Hopefully, I can get the remainder of our outdoor tree lights down tomorrow before the temperatures start dropping again.  I pray everyone has a great Sunday and a wonderful week!