TACCOR - Disaster Response
The Texas Annual Conference Committee on Relief (TACCOR) coordinates disaster response efforts and trains teams to respond. The latest news, trainings and other information are listed below.
Central Texas Wildfires: The counties of Williamson, Travis, Bastrop and Caldwell are in our Southwest Texas Conference and are still requesting only ERT trained and badged personnel at this time. AmeriCorps handling the general population volunteer registration effort is shutting down now. We continue to help teams (and individuals) serve in the Central Texas Wildfire Relief & Recovery through our partnership with the SW Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church. Contact: SW Texas Conference http://www.umcswtx.org/wildfire-response-registration
Montgomery &, Waller County Wildfires: This effort is well in hand as your Methodist Church is involved with the Long Term Recovery Committees in these areas. Response was mostly local and quickly addressed by our Disaster Response Committee and its partners. Individual outreach requests from survivors come in from time to time and may offer mission opportunities for Church Recovery teams through our Partners in Missions. Contact: your Conference Disaster Response Coordinator dewittcox3@gmail.com
Leon & Houston Counties Wildfires: With support from Houston area churches and management from our Coordinators in these counties, initial response has taken care of the immediate needs of families affected by the fires. Check in from time to time for any individual posted needs that surface. Contact: your Conference Disaster Response Coordinator dewittcox3@gmail.com
Cass & Marion County Wildfires: The effort in this area of our conference is well in hand, also. Local response is taking care of the need as neighbors help neighbors. If individual outreach requests come in from time to time, we will post them for mission opportunities through our Partners in Missions. Contact: your Conference Disaster Response Coordinator dewittcox3@gmail.com
Disaster Management in Texas: First, the face changed with the development of the Texas Department of Emergency Management. Now, the body is following suit with state encouragement of its counties to promote partnerships prior to a disaster. Most Texas counties are rural and cannot support personnel in their Office of Emergency Management to handle a large scale disaster. This has always resulted in help arriving well after the disaster was underway. With TXCUMC and our other non-profit partners preparing for response and recovery missions on a year round basis, the state is pushing county governments to engage and develop a working relationship among all these stakeholders.
The Methodist Church has always been a leader in disaster response in Texas and we are positioned to continue this effort well into the future. TACCOR, your emergency management committee, is prepared to invest time and effort to be a part of these proceedings. However, the largest interruption of information flow has always been between the state and county levels sometimes preventing us from knowing about these meetings. Therefore, we ask that any of our churches that become aware of county efforts to organize with nongovernment support organizations, please let us know. We encourage our individual churches, congregations and pastors to get connected so, we have no intention of stepping in and leaving you out. Disaster Response has become a big enterprise and we don’t want our churches to get run over or pushed aside.
Marji Bashir from The North Texas Annual Conference wrote an account of relief efforts titled: Hope Among the Ashes.
211 Emergency Evacuation If you need or you know someone who has registered with 211 for evacuation assistance service in the past, you may not be aware that you need to register each year. City and County Emergency Management Officers report that of the 12,000 people registered last year only 1000 are currently listed. This free service needs to be requested each and every year. Questions of how this works can be requested of your Disaster Response Coordinator, DeWitt Cox at dewittcox3@gmail.com.
Explore Ready Kids, a website packed with information and games to help kids and their families better prepare in the event of a disaster. Learn how to create an emergency kit, read the latest Ready Kids comic and meet the Mountain Lion Family to learn how they prepare for different situations. You can even graduate from Readiness U and get your very own certificate.
Go to www.ready.gov/kids/index.html to find out about different kinds of severe weather and learn the best way to keep you, your family and pets safe before danger happens.
Download Disaster Response Plan
Early Response Team Trainings
No events scheduled
No events scheduled
Spiritual Response Team Trainings
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PIM Team Leader Training
Cleaning Buckets Needed In wake of the spring disasters around the country, churches have been most generous to help those affected by the storms and flooding. Many have assembled cleaning buckets for distribution by UMCOR. The donated cleaning buckets need to be assembled exactly according to the UMCOR guidelines. If your church has collected buckets, deliver to Old River Terrace UMC, 161 I-10 East at Beltway 8, Channelview, 77530. Contact Rev. Clay Whitaker claytonwhitaker@sbcglobal.net.
“Want more hands on?” See other kits needed in the Partners In Missions Brochure
Help Now “What can we do to help survivors of a disaster?” When disaster strikes, your Conference will need churches to host teams of Early Responders from Methodist Churches. Hosting volunteers can be as simple as providing the space for a dozen hard working volunteers to rest up and eat a meal before another day’s work in your area.