Disaster Relief News
Southern Baptist disaster relief operation in full motion in midst of Southern California wildfires October 24, 2007 By Mickey Noah Baptist Press ALPHARETTA, Ga. –
As 20 or more Southern California wildfires continue to burn without an end in sight, the North American Mission Board and the California Southern Baptist Convention have ratcheted up disaster response operations with both staff and resources, here and in California.
Two California Southern Baptist feeding units are deployed at Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres, and are expected to serve 18,000 meals – 9,000 for lunch and an equal number for dinner – daily to exhausted firefighters, police and other law enforcement, fire victims and volunteers.
Those feeding units – which can prepare up to 10,000 meals at a time — were originally to be based in Escondido and Mira Mesa, near San Diego, but those areas also had to be evacuated. “First Baptist Church in Newhall, Calif., is serving as a fixed kitchen feeding site, and is gearing up to prepare and serve some 250-700 meals a day,” according to Mickey Caison, director of NAMB’s disaster operation center in Georgia. Newhall is in north Los Angeles County.
For the first time since the devastating hurricanes two years ago, Caison said NAMB fully activated its disaster operations center at its Alpharetta, Ga. facility, and is now staffed full-time by four NAMB staff members and six volunteers.
A seven-person incident command team has been activated and dispatched to California Baptist University in Riverside, Calif., where a command post will be set up in a university office on the CBU campus. CBU in Riverside was selected for the incident command center because it is located in the geographic center of the ravaging fires, according to Don Hargis, disaster relief coordinator for the California Southern Baptist Convention.
The 20 fires stretch from Santa Barbara, north of Los Angeles, south to San Diego. In addition, California Southern Baptist shower units have been set up at First Baptist in Newhall and at Petco Park in San Diego. With six private shower stalls, the units can handle about 600 persons a day.
Another 9,000 evacuees are being housed at Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers. Hargis said more than 100 disaster relief volunteers have already been mobilized for duty, and the Arizona and Nevada state Baptist conventions have been asked to provide replacements for feeding units in November. In addition, Arizona feeding and shower units are also on standby for possible deployment, Caison said. And the American Red Cross has activated 75 emergency response vehicles to deliver meals prepared by the Southern Baptist feeding units.
According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 420,000 acres – 656 square miles – have been charred by the chain of wildfires, fueled by Santa Ana winds that earlier gusted up to 100 miles-per-hour in some places, but are now in the 25-35 miles-per-hour range. The winds, which are seriously hampering firefighting operations, are projected to diminish after Wednesday.
More than 1,300 homes have been destroyed and more than 880,000 people displaced in the Southern California area. In San Diego County alone, about 350,000 households have been evacuated.
As a result of the evacuations, the city’s hotels are full. Although the wildfires crept close to First Baptist Church in Poway, the SBC church was not damaged. Dwight Simpson, director of missions for the San Diego Baptist Association, said he was “unaware” of any Southern Baptist churches damaged or destroyed by the fires.
As reported earlier, NAMB missionary/church starting strategist Dan Cookson and his family were forced to evacuate their San Diego home when the fires first broke out. Although he’s been unable to access his neighborhood, “we feel like our home is still okay,” Cookson said today (Oct. 24).
For more information contact Ellen Udovich, 410-290-5290 ext 216, eudovich@bcmd.org or Ministry Assistant, Donna Shiflett 410-290-5290 ext 226, dshiflett@bcmd.org