Katrina Relief Coordination Presbytery of East Tennessee

TO: Churches and Disaster Contact Persons, Presbytery of East Tennessee
FROM: Fritz Schilling, Cindy Benz, Charles Montgomery, and Rob Mellgard
SUBJECT: Knoxville Area Hurricane Katrina Relief Update
POSTED: September 7, 2005 12:30 pm
A huge thanks for your response to our call for money and assistance on Sunday, September 4. Obviously we have no figures, but we hope you have become aware of our Presbyterian efforts to respond to Hurricane Katrina's tragic aftermath. The denomination immediately sent $500,000 from our One Great Hour of Sharing offering and more is on the way thanks to generous individual and church donations. As coordinator for the Presbytery of East Tennessee's Disaster Response Network, I, The Rev. Fritz Schilling, along with Elder Charles Montgomery of Fountain City Presbyterian Church, have asked the Rev. Cindy Benz (on staff of Sequoyah Presbyterian and wife of our Executive, Steve Benz) to help coordinate this particular crisis. We want you to know several crucial; things about our involvement in the local relief efforts.
1) 750 or so evacuees are expected to come by bus to Knoxville on Wednesday, September 7. The shelters set up for them as of this date are the Knoxville Civic Coliseum and Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church. Small shelters with evacuees who have come by auto are running at Central Baptist of Bearden and First Baptist.
2) We desperately need groups of volunteer caregivers (minimum age 17) to work in shifts in these shelters. If you have volunteers please send them for Red Cross training and send their names, along with a point person’s contact information to the Disaster Relief office (disaster@presbyteryeasttn.org or the presbytery office)
3) Volunteers MUST have training. The first training session was held Monday, September 5 at Cedar Springs. Other training opportunities are 6-9pm Tuesday, September 6 and Thursday, September 8 at Greater Warner Tabernacle AME Zion Church at 3800 Martin Luther King Boulevard. We anticipate more training centers and times. We will keep you posted but we need to have these shelters manned by Monday, September 12.
4) We want to put trained caregivers in groups of 25-30, so we will try to hook up smaller church groups with larger ones. 120 caregivers per shift are required for the Coliseum shelter alone! We would like to put shelter staffing groups together through the following churches: Erin, Farragut, First Knoxville, Fountain city, Lake Forest, Lake Hills, New Providence, Oak Ridge, Second Knoxville, Sequoyah Hills, and Westminster. Other churches with shelter volunteers PLEASE contact the office of one of the above and hook up with the group forming there. We will check in to make sure you get connected. Shift times will probably be 8-hour ones and the shelter will need 24-hour coverage. (The Cedar Springs shelter will house 250 and is being managed by them and caregivers are being solicited also at each training meeting).
5) We need a Coordinator from each church for this particular disaster. It may be the current Disaster Network Contact Person who was hopefully already designated from your congregation.
6) Food and other supplies for the shelters will be handled by bringing materials to your church - and only those requested through your Coordinator and delivered where specified. We don't want to waste resources nor overload the system.
7) We are setting up a special Presbytery Website for getting out information. We will let you know when it is up and what is happening via weekly (or more often) e-mails.
8) Take note of three essential websites:
presbyteryeasttn.org (link to Presbytery Disaster Relief in the top left hand corner, says Hurricane Katrina for information)
compassion coalition.org (managing group, with Red Cross, of Coliseum shelter) pcusa.org/PDA (Presbyterian USA Disaster Assistance)
9) There is a special and urgent need for volunteers who are Child Care Workers, Nurses, or Mental Health Workers. Please e-mail or call Cindy, Fritz, Charles or Rob with names and contact numbers for people in these categories.
10) We are setting up a Katrina Disaster Relief office to coordinate Presbyterian efforts at the Presbytery office. By Monday, September 12, we will have a dedicated phone number; we will send this by email as soon as possible. Between now and Monday you may call the presbytery office (865-688-5581 or 800-542-4246) or email (preferred!) to Katrina@presbyteryeasttn.org. We will try to staff the relief office Monday through Friday during business hours. If you are available to help staff this office, please use the contacts given.
11) Emergency contacts for information: Fritz Schilling 865-691-4548 or fbschill309@knology.net; Cindy Benz 865-966-5256 or cindybenz@aol.com; Charles Montgomery 865-694-1722 or montymontgomery@comcast.net; Rob Mellgard 865-687-3911, cell number 865-216-3425 or nhpc@bellsouth.net.
NOTE - This scenario evolves by the hour, so please keep abreast by way of the previously mentioned websites. Notification concerning Presbytery teams going to the disaster areas will come later.
Thanks for all your variety of gifts.
Fritz Schilling Cindy Benz Charles Montgomery Rob Mellgard