Plan for Disasters!

As Chairman of Disasters for the State of Florida, I would like to suggest that each of our churches plan to do the following action whenever we have, or appear to be going to have, a disaster in our state. Use your church’s communication tree (which all of you should have that reaches your members and close friends) to survey your members on the following questions:

If your church area is in harm’s way or potentially in harm’s way, check which families need to evacuate from their homes and divide them into the following categories:

1. those with adults (how many?and what age group) with no pets or children.
2. those with adults (how many?and what age group) with pets that must accom-pany them (kind and how many?)
3. those with adults (how many?and what age group) and children (ages and how many?)
4. those with adults (how many?and what age group) and children (ages and how many?) and pets (what kind and how many?)

Call in the results of your survey to me, Enid Uhrich, 813-634-7564 or if you get no answer call the district office. DO NOT give us names or phone num-bers of each family, but only the num-bers in each category. DO give us the name and phone number (with area) of a contact person who will know the names and phone numbers of families needing placement.

If your church is one who could take evacuees please make a same survey of your families to see who could take in evacuees and determine which catagory each family could take. DO NOT give me those names and phone numbers but do telephone me the num-ber you can take in each category and DO give me the name and phone num-ber of my contact person in your church. Also let me know if you are opening the church premises for evacu-ees and what you can handle.

We used this system during FLOYD and it works. While you can do some planning for this in advance, it would constantly need updating and therefore works best when the incident has re-cently happened or seems probable. This system can also be used within one church if only an area of your mem-bers is in trouble and the rest of your members can help them.

— ENID UHRICH, 813-634-7564 1509 BUNKER HILL DR. SUN CITY CENTER, FL 33573