Disaster Action Plan

Concept

Natural disasters, while infrequent, do happen in central North Carolina. In recent times ice storms, snow storms, flooding, tornadoes, and hurricanes have occurred in Wake and surrounding counties.

Because of this, we’ve developed a plan to serve the members of the Raleigh Church of Christ and their immediate, local family members in the event of a disaster or weather event of significance that may cause personal injury or property damage. The plan concentrates on communication with our membership before and immediately after a situation of concern occurs. Using what resources that our membership possesses we will attempt to meet the needs of our membership during emergencies and natural disasters.

This page describes the congregation’s Disaster Action Plan. It tells how the calling tree will work to check on members during a disaster, and provides links to help you prepare your home for emergencies.

How It Works

Our congregation has members that live over a multi-county area in and around Raleigh. Geographical zones where our members live have been defined. Volunteer Zone Captains and Branch Contacts have been defined for each of the zones. When a disaster occurs, the Zone Captains and Branch Contacts will attempt to make contact with each of the members of their zone using the zone calling tree in the online directory (more info below).

If the telephones are not working then physical contact will need to be made to assess needs. The Zone Captains will relay information to Justin and Mac for coordination between the zones. NOTE: Common sense must in all cases be exercised to minimize the risk to personal safety. In some cases it may not be physically possible to make contact with all members of a zone.

Justin Collier and Mac Safley are responsible for coordinating and leading the overall plan, and will work to keep the plan up-to-date.

Master list of zone and branch contacts (last updated January 2020).

Calling Tree

All members are assigned to zones in the congregation’s online directory. You can see your zone and branch in your entry in the directory, under Groups. Zone captains and branch contacts can use the Groups listing for their zone/branch to work through the members they need to contact. If you need access to the online directory, ask Jeff Hunter.

Here’s how the calling tree works:

  • Leaders: If a disaster is impending or actually occurs Justin and Mac will contact the Zone Captains and implement the calling tree. The primary purpose of the communication is to determine the status of each family and identify urgent needs for help/attention. Zone Captains will be advised regarding other information that needs to be either relayed or collected.
  • Zone Captains: Upon receiving a call each Zone Captain will begin making calls to their zone members. The first family in each “branch” of the zone’s calling tree have been designated as “branch contacts”.
  • Branch Contacts: The branch contacts will attempt to contact all of the families listed on their branch. They will pass along information from the Zone Captain and also collected pertinent information that they will then relay information back to their Zone Captain who will then relay pertinent information to Justin or Mac.

Questionnaire

Questionnaires designed to help collect useful information have been made available to the congregation. If you are a new member or need to update the information originally submitted please contact either Justin or Mac for a new form. Please note that the management plan can be no better than the information that we have.

Disaster Assistance

The amount and quality of disaster assistance that our congregation can offer to our membership will be limited to our combined resources. Our plan will not meet all of the congregation’s needs such as helping to rebuild a house that is damaged by a falling tree. However, we would like to be able to make temporary home repairs and meet the immediate, emergency-based physical needs of the congregation. Housing and meals, depending on the situation, may be accomplished using either individual homes or the church building. This program is intended to be an immediate response, short term action to get those in need through the initial phase of recovering from a disaster.

Ideas

We welcome your ideas for plan improvement. Please see Justin Collier or Mac Safley if you have suggestions.

Emergency Preparedness Resources

Here are some additional references for family emergency planning. These are PDF documents available for download from our site:

Resources available from other web sites: