Category Archives: Disaster Respons

Cagayan de Oro Flooding Response Trip Update after Day 1

Our team of 5 individuals from Bukal Life Care & Counseling Center began the trip to Cagayan de Oro (CDO) on Monday approximately 6AM. The previous week flooding resulted in over 1000 deaths and 50,000 in temporary housing. The team arrived in Manila and got on their 4PM flight to Cagayan de Oro. Unfortunately due to bad weather in CDO, the plane was diverted Davao, a city that is 10 hours from CDO by bus. Arriving in Davao, they were able to find a van going to CDO and began the overnight trek. Local government was not recommending taking the overland route because of risk of landslides, but since air travel was cancelled, there was no choice.
The team arrived around 7AM on the 27th. After breakfast, they began training local church and layleaders in crisis intervention. During the previous week, local government, government agencies, NGOs and religious groups joined together in CDO to plan response. Because of our plan to come down, the evangelical churches were given the responsibility for crisis counseling/intervention. They formed Ka-gayan Evangelical Disaster Response Network. This was the group we started training. 97 trainees were with us on the first day of training. The same trainees plan to join us on day two of training. The following day, our team will work with the trainees in crisis counseling/intervention with primary and secondary victims of the flooding.

After the first day of training, the team visited some of the major flood areas. Now they are catching up on their sleep (having been awake for two full days). We will update you all in a couple of days.

Disaster Relief Cagayan de Oro Update

Disaster Relief Chaplaincy Training (a training in Critical Incident Stress Debriefing/Psychological First Aid for clergy and lay professionals) will be facilitated by Bukal LIfe Care & Counseling Center. December 27-28 at Cagayan Gospel Church, 15 cor Tomas Saco St. Nazareth, Cagayan de Oro

Disaster Response Trip to Cagayan de Oro

5 members of our team, led by our Executive Director, will be traveling to Cagayan de Oro, as part of a Bukal Life Care & Counseling Center mission. Our Bukal Life team is going down with the focus of training and empowering church leaders (clergy and layleaders) to effectively provide crisis care/counseling to their members and members of their community. Evangelical churches in CDO are joining together to form Kagay-an Evangelical Disaster Response Network. They are working with a broader team of NGOs and government groups. The team leaves Baguio (and Davao) on December 26 and returns on the 30th. Please pray.

Flooding in Northern Mindanao

Please keep the people of Northern Mindanao in your prayers as they are recovering from massive flooding. Hundreds have died and thousands are in temporary shelters. We are looking to put together a disaster response counseling team. We need your prayers in this… but they need your prayers much more than us.

Article on CPE and Disaster Response training

Please look at this link. It is an article suggesting that CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) is the best preparation for disaster response. This is opposed to the conventional wisdom of the 2-5 day crash training course.
Of course, since CPE is 400 hours of training per unit, it really should be more than a 30-40 hour total time course. Still, would love to hear your thoughts.

ARTICLE

Dalicno Trip. Disaster Response Counseling Training

We travelled to Dalicno, Itogon… a mining community in the Cordillera Mountains of the Philippines. We spent the day there at Mountain Light Church leading training for a bit over 20 in Disaster Response Counseling. Bob led the morning lecture. Celia led the afternoon training and NOVA group training. Juliet led music and assisted with the NOVA small groups. Jehny acted as our host and assisted with NOVA group training. We thank the church and people of Dalicno for their hospitality. It is a beautiful place and had a wonderful time. Some photos are on Facebook.

Photos

Supertyphoon Juan (Megi)

Supertyphoon Juan (Megi) is bearing down on Northern Luzon Island. It is taking a path across Isabela Province and then across the Cordilleran mountain range. These same areas were devastated by Typhoon Pepeng (Parma) last October. It is a fast moving storm and, prayerfully, it will pass by too fast for great destruction. However, many people still feel the hurts of the losses from Pepeng.

Please keep people in these areas in your prayers. To keep updated on this storm, pleas look at http://www.typhoon2000.ph/