Just a week before Christmas, Baptist disaster response teams from the Mid-Atlantic remain at work in New York and New Jersey, assisting residents still impacted by Hurricane Sandy’s landfall there on Oct. 29.
In the past seven weeks, Virginia Baptist Disaster Response has prepared about 200,000 meals, while North Carolina Baptist Men and Women has provided about 550,000.
Virginia Baptist Disaster Response is at work in New York.
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Additional volunteers are needed at least through January, leaders of both disaster response organizations said on their Facebook pages. They encouraged college students to consider volunteering during their winter breaks.
The Virginians and North Carolinians are engaged in feeding and recovery in the Queens borough of New York City. The North Carolinians also have recovery units at two sites in New Jersey, Piscataway and Allenwood.
A North Carolina Baptist Men and Women unit in Jamaica, N.Y.
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Meanwhile, the District of Columbia Baptist Emergency Response Team — which sent recovery volunteers to New Jersey immediately after the storm — has completed a certification process for what it says is the nation’s first faith-based winter response unit. Its volunteers are prepared “to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable at-risk residents in D.C. when a major winter storm hits,” according to a post on the team’s Facebook page.
In related news, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship announced Dec. 12 it has named Tommy Deal as its national disaster response coordinator. Although not a first-responder organization, the CBF provides supplies, resources and volunteers in the wake of disasters.
Tommy Deal
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Since May, Deal has served as the disaster response coordinator for the CBF of Georgia. He will continue in that role as part of a collaborative relationship between the CBFGA and the national CBF, the organization said.
The CBFs of Virginia, North Carolina and the Mid-Atlantic work closely with the national body in disaster recovery projects, and the CBFNC also partners with North Carolina Baptist Men and Women.
Deal, a former associate coordinator for the CBF of Florida, succeeds Charles Ray in the national disaster coordinator role.
“The goal of Tommy’s appointment is to both help manage and expand CBF relief efforts,” Harry Rowland, the CBF’s missional church engagement specialist, said. “Charles Ray moved CBF from a ‘wait and see what we can do’ approach to a proactive, prepared network of state and regional response efforts, and now Tommy will build on that.”
Robert Dilday (rdilday@religiousherald.org) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.