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“One thing we have learned over the past few years is that there’s no longer ‘disaster season’ – every month can bring a disaster now.”
That was the overall assessment at the Virginia Emergency Management Symposium (VEMS), where Impact Disaster Response met with other volunteer agency and emergency management partners, assessing the response to Helene and developing relationships that will enable future responses.
As we begin National Hurricane Preparedness week (May 1-7), Impact Disaster Response is encouraging churches to train and develop the relationships they need to respond to hurricanes and other weather disasters, which are becoming increasingly common. As we see more frequent local disasters—in addition to catastrophic events like Hurricane Helene—individual churches are uniquely placed to respond and engage the resources available to them through Impact Disaster Response and BGAV. One of the best ways churches can serve their community in time of disaster is by befriending local emergency responders before a disaster happens. We know that in disaster mode, responders will rarely have time to develop new relationships. Instead they focus on the partners they already know, so we want to help churches form those relationships before they need them.
In conversations with local emergency managers, we’ve learned the best thing (beyond just reaching out and talking to them) is having a clear understanding both of your own resources and what resources those community agencies have to offer you. Emergency managers know the needs they see every year, and they are likely already working on a way to respond. Churches can distinguish themselves by supporting those local needs with the resources they have on hand. When a disaster leads to a response that is bigger than one church or one locality, you can also leverage resources from across Virginia to support your community (or go to another community to support them). We have compiled a list of likely resources that individual churches may be able to provide (physical resources and people), along with what BGAV and local emergency managers can offer to support the church’s work.
We encourage you to assess your church using this tool to help you start the conversation with your local emergency management. When, not if, a disaster hits your community, you’ll be ready to be the center of the community and a place where the love of Christ meets the greatest needs of the people most affected.
