Newsline: Children's Disaster Services starts work in Springfield, completes Joplin response

[CoBNews <CoBNews@brethren.org>]

Newsline: Church of the Brethren News Service, News Director Cheryl
Brumbaugh-Cayford, 800-323-8039 ext. 260, cobnews@brethren.org

Children's Disaster Services starts work in Springfield, completes Joplin 
response

(June 17, 2011) Elgin, IL -- A new response site for Children's Disaster 
Services (CDS) is Springfield, Mass., which was hit by a tornado on June 2. A 
team of five CDS volunteers began work there late last week in response to a 
call from the American Red Cross. 

In Springfield, the CDS team is working in the Mass Mutual shelter--a multi 
purpose arena and convention center. "The center is working well," reports CDS 
associate director Judy Bezon.

The Springfield Tornado has been "declared," Bezon says, "which means the 
President has identified it as a major disaster area, which in turn makes 
federal resources available to those whose homes have been destroyed." She 
expects FEMA to open eight Disaster Recovery Centers (DRCs) where people come 
to apply for aid. "We have had preliminary talks with the FEMA Voluntary Agency 
Liaisons about setting up child care centers in some of their DRCs," she adds.

Meanwhile, CDS volunteers have completed a project caring for children of 
families living in shelters in Joplin, Mo. Previously this spring, CDS also 
served in Tuscaloosa, Ala., after tornado destruction there in April.

The last CDS volunteers left Joplin yesterday. A total of 28 CDS volunteers 
have worked there since the tornado. The response lasted well past the standard 
time limit of two weeks for CDS volunteers, so new volunteers were rotated in 
while others left after completing their two weeks.

"The last few days, CDS volunteers who lived locally drove in to help us--they 
couldn't stay an entire week," Bezon reports. "The Red Cross Case Workers 
worked hard to find places for the last people in the shelter to live. 
Generally we leave a few days before the shelter closes, as numbers of children 
are dwindling."

Bezon herself worked in Joplin up until last week as part of a Critical 
Response Childcare team that was deployed because of the high number of 
fatalities in Joplin. That specially trained team was "very very needed in the 
shelters," she says. Some of the children in the Joplin shelters required 
intensive caregiving. 

The CDS volunteers in Joplin handled an especially stressful situation very 
well, Bezon says gratefully. "It was a hardship because the volunteers were 
living in the shelters, and the work was so difficult. The sheer number of 
children and the behavioral needs were very intense."

The destruction in the area of Joplin hit by the tornado is "just 
unbelievable," in Bezon's words. The path of the tornado was a mile wide and 
six miles long, and passed through low and middle income areas. "Everything in 
its path was completely flattened," she says. "It looks barren in every way."

One reason the shelters in Joplin had been needed for longer than usual was 
that damaged homes continued to be condemned and demolished, forcing families 
to find other places to live when all available housing and hotels were already 
full, Bezon explains. Many residents "doubled up" by sharing their homes with 
friends. The people left in the shelters were those without the connections or 
the money to find other places to live.

In other disaster relief news, Brethren Disaster Ministries has just learned 
that it will receive a grant for $52,500 from the Community Foundation of 
Middle Tennessee for its home rebuilding project in the Nashville area. 

The Church of the Brethren is a Christian denomination committed to continuing 
the work of
Jesus peacefully and simply, and to living out its faith in community. The 
denomination is based
in the Anabaptist and Pietist faith traditions and is one of the three Historic 
Peace Churches. It
celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2008. It counts some 123,000 members across 
the United
States and Puerto Rico, and has missions and sister churches in Nigeria, 
Brazil, the Dominican
Republic, Haiti, and India.

># # #

>For more information contact:

>Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford
>Director of News Services
>Church of the Brethren
>1451 Dundee Ave., Elgin, IL 60120
>800-323-8039 ext. 260
>cobnews@brethren.org