Combined forces

When a category F3 tornado tore through Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, on May 6, members at two local United Methodist churches joined forces to help residents there who suffered devastating losses.

Two members from New McKendree United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau, and five from La Croix United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau, came together as an emergency response team.

Brad Davis, a member at New McKendree, was one of the men in the ERT, the job of which, in this instance, was to go to the disaster site and clear rubble and downed trees using chain saws.

Davis's role was to keep the 10 chain saws oiled, sharpened and ready for use. The chain saws were donated by Crader Distributing through Buchheit of Jackson.

Davis said other trips the ERT of New McKendree UMC have made in the past mostly involved rebuilding residents' homes, rather than removing debris.

"It was the first trip for our team that involved disaster cleanup," he said.

The team headed to Oklahoma June 9, and returned June 13.

Seeing the wreckage left by the tornado was an emotional experience, Davis said.

"It was humbling, walking through all that debris and seeing the remnants of people's lives scattered on the ground," he said.

Before they got to work, they reported to Hal Wright, project coordinator for United Methodist Disaster Response, who had an office set up with FEMA officials at Yukon United Methodist Church.

"We were told that they were out of money, and were basically depending on teams like ours to help them," Davis said.

The men were handed a stack of about a half-dozen work orders, and told by Wright that they wouldn't be expected to finish all of them, just to do the best they could.

"We finished them the next day and went back to ask for more work orders," Davis said.

Though they were able to complete some jobs in a few hours, others took more than a day to finish.

The team cleared debris from 10 residences during the five-day trip.

"This team did an amazing job helping the residents of this area. I was impressed by the amount of work they completed while they were here," Wright said in a news release. "Sometimes government disaster response can be slow, and teams like this are a welcome sight to residents who have been waiting to put their lives back together."

William "Willie" Cunningham, one of the ERT members from La Croix, was asked to be the team leader, but, he said, the team worked well together that leadership wasn't really necessary.

"We had a very, very experienced group of people," Cunningham said. "Everybody knew what to do."

That's not always the case on mission trips of this kind, he said, but this one was different.

"We just stopped at a job site and went to work," Cunningham said.

Davis agreed. "Everybody worked in perfect harmony," he said. "Ours was really a working team."

So prepared was the team that it brought all the food for the duration of the trip, and one of them served as camp cook, preparing meals for everyone during their stay.

The partnership between the two churches proved very successful.

"It was really great to join forces with the members of La Croix," Davis said.

The other member from New McKendree UMC who participated was Ryan Shelton. La Croix UMC members of the team who joined Cunningham were Danny Rees, Wayne Shockley, Dan Strauss and Mike Diamond.

Davis said the trip was exhausting, but rewarding.

"We were beat when we got home," he said. "But, we felt like we really made a difference."