Two South Carolina Baptist Convention Disaster Relief teams will deploy to different parts of the country in June for special projects. An ash-out team will serve in Colorado, and a children’s response team will serve in Nashville.

Last September, wildfires devastated areas of Colorado. Just as the state’s Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers were able to get into the area to begin assisting homeowners with clean-up, snow fell, and they had to back off and wait for the summer melt. SCBC DR Director Randy Creamer will lead a team from our state to assist Colorado on June 5-12 as the first ash-out team this year.

The ash-out team consists of five college students and two church staff members who are newly trained in DR and six experienced DR volunteers. The plan is to split into two groups, to be able to work in two houses simultaneously. Additionally, four DR cooks are going on the trip to prepare meals for the team.

The work will consist of separating metal from other debris in cleaning up the burned-out home sites, since the intensity of the fires left nothing to salvage. To help with the sorting and moving of debris, tasks will include operating equipment such as skid steers, and driving an old fire engine tanker to bring in loads of water to spray for ash/dust control.

The children’s response team (CRT) will provide childcare for families attending the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Nashville, deploying June 12-17. Our South Carolina team of 13 is assigned to care for the one-year-olds, with the assistance of a CRT group from another state.  Because the meeting sessions go from morning into the night, the volunteers will serve in two shifts.

Serving in a non-disaster event such as this will help the volunteers to be better prepared to serve when they are needed in a disaster. They will stay in a church, sleeping on the cots or air mattresses they take with them, showering in DR shower units, and eating meals prepared by a DR feeding team, just as they would in a disaster response.  

CRT volunteers from SC have served in annual meetings previously in Baltimore and Birmingham (pictured above), as well as providing childcare for leaders at Converge, SCBC’s collegiate conference, for several years. Leading the team to Nashville will be Joy Canupp of Fort Mill First Baptist in the York Association, who serves on the SCBC DR Leadership Team as the CRT Coordinator.

You may give to support these and other SCBC Disaster Relief efforts through our online giving system, or by mailing a check. Click HERE for more information.

 A typical burned-out home in Colorado