Harold Johnson, Blue Cap

RRBA Disaster Relief Team Leader

TO:  Disaster Relief Volunteers

FROM:  Harold Johnson, Unit Director

SUBJECT:  Update Newsletter # 51

DATE:  November 27th, 2011

The purpose of this memo is to provide you with an update on what is going on with Red River Baptist Association Disaster Relief.

I need to apologize for this being only the second newsletter this year. Actually there hasn’t been a lot to report.

Finally after more than two years of inactivity we were given a disaster response assignment. On July 28^th and 29^th 21 of us traveled to Minot, North Dakota, a city that had been ravaged by a flood. We worked out of North Hills Baptist Church in Minot using equipment belonging to the Kansas-Nebraska Convention. We began our operation on July 30^th and continued through August 5^th. We traveled home on August 6^th and 7^th. We worked with two of our response partners, the Salvation Army and The American Red Cross. We prepared a total of 18,055 meals, or about 2,600 per day. About 150 breakfasts, 150 dinners, 50 lunches, and 100 sack lunches were prepared for the personnel who regularly ate at the church (mud out team members, incident command staff, chaplains and ourselves). The remainder was delivered by the Red Cross and Salvation Army. Thanks to those who endured the long trip and difficult conditions.

You may be wondering why we are not currently getting the number of callouts that we got in our earlier years. There are two reasons. One is where there were three kitchen units in the state there are now ten. The other is that the Red Cross is not able to respond as much as they did previously.

We used our automated alert system for the Minot callout and it worked well since we had learned that phone numbers used in the messages need to be spelled out and separated by spaces for the computer to express them clearly. I know that it is still hard to grasp the number we are asking you to call from the verbal message. If we are working with adequate response time, (and it is not a weekend) the number will normally be the Red River office number (870 246 9524). Otherwise it will usually be Joe Burt’s number (870 403 4878) or mine (870 246 5151). I suggest that you post these numbers near your phone so they can be readily available. Since some may not have gotten the description of the process in an earlier newsletter I will repeat it for you. In the event of a callout we are able to initiate a notification by entering the wording for the message and hitting the “send” key. All your phones will ring simultaneously; you will listen to the message, and confirm that you received it. Don’t hang up until you have listened to the instructions about acknowledging receipt of the message. If you do not answer your primary phone after multiple attempts by the system it will shift to any listed secondary numbers, then to e-mail if you have it.

Our April 16^th training session at Hope went well. Unfortunately we had only 2 new personnel. Several who attended the update session and assisted with training the new personnel were recertified.

We were asked by the Arkansas Baptist State Convention to participate in a One Day Mission Trip to Ouachita Association on September 1^st. We set up at First Baptist Church DeQueen and prepared 1,500 hamburger and 1,000 hot dog lunches. We contacted our personnel living in that part of the state asking them to assist us. Enough responded that we only had to take our drivers and blue caps over with the equipment. We have been asked to do the same thing next year at Helena on October 1^st.

Our annual training for 2012 for this region will be on April 14^th at FBC Arkadelphia. If you do not have the new type ID card or your card expires in 2012 you need to attend the update training and assist us in training the new personnel. We usually have good attendance in Arkadelphia.

Jessie and I want to wish each of you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

I hope this helps you to stay informed.  Please call me at 870-246-5151 or e-mail me at johnsonhj@suddenlink.net if you have questions or comments.