Community Disaster Planning

Community disaster response is an opportunity for Grace Lutheran Church to serve disaster victims in times of crisis, but do so from a position of strength and preparedness. Ensuring that the church is able to proficiently take preventative measures and respond to church related disasters first, creates the foundation from which Grace can maximize its capability to focus on responding to needs outside of the church.

A plan has been developed that defines how the church can meet the needs of the community with success. However, even greater effectiveness can be achieved by encouraging and helping other churches to plan and work with each other in conjunction with coordinating disaster response with core partner organizations like Churches United, Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters (VOAD), and Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR). This approach multiplies available resources, helps to avoid asynchronous duplication of services, reduces response time to disaster victims, and helps both the churches and community to know who is providing what.

Creating a community disaster response plan requires a filtering process to help the church determine what it realistically can or cannot commit to in responding to community disasters. The Community Disaster Response Decision Matrix Form was designed to achieve this result. The information obtained from working through the matrix helps to address issues stated within instructions that filter that information. The form demands that tough decisions be made in considering a combination of objective and subjective information. This process helps to ensure that Grace does not over-extend its material resources and burn out its congregation when responding to disasters.

The completion of the Community Disaster Response Decision Matrix Form allowed the Disaster Response Team to move forward to define volunteer positions, develop procedures for executing disaster services, create an operations budget, negotiate with organizations to receive services provided by Grace Lutheran Church, and to recruit volunteers to fill defined positions.

See Community Disasters within the Disaster Response Plan to review the planning outline and how Grace Lutheran Church will respond to community disasters.

Note: All disaster response related forms and spreadsheets used by the Disaster Response Team are located in the Disaster Response page.

Disaster Response Plan

Disaster Response Home