"The Local Church is UMCOR" -- relief committee executive on U.S. Disaster Response (April 2014) -- news release

From UM Committee on Relief home page dot-org: May 1, 2014—After four straight days of tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and damaging floods across the South and Midwest United States, Early Response Teams trained by the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) are assessing relief needs in their United Methodist annual (regional) conferences. “The local church is UMCOR,” said Greg Forrester, UMCOR assistant general secretary for U.S. Disaster Response. “They are on the ground immediately following a disaster in their conferences and have the capacity and training to assess relief needs and discern a way forward.” He said that reports he has received from conferences impacted by the storms indicate that there is no need at this time for additional volunteers from outside the conferences, and he urged well-meaning people from beyond the affected areas to not self-deploy. Forrester has been in touch all week with the bishops and disaster response coordinators in the affected annual conferences, and Cathy Earl, who works with Forrester, is in North Carolina today, accompanying Bishop Hope Morgan Ward on a visit to tornado- and flood-hit communities. The storm system that spawned devastating tornadoes earlier in the week brought torrential rain to some of the same areas—notably Alabama, which received more than 20 inches yesterday—before moving up the East Coast. The Florida Panhandle also received two feet of rainwater. A total of 17 states have been impacted by the storm, which interrupted an otherwise quiet start to 2014. Powerful EF-4 tornadoes, the second highest rating, decimated towns in Arkansas and Mississippi and caused numerous deaths and injuries. . . http://www.umcor.org/UMCOR/Resources/News-Stories/2014/May/0501assessingreliefneeds