Financial & Tactical Help Recovering from the Fire

This Blog Post includes information about the services of Samaritan's Purse, FEMA Disaster Assistance Team, as well as a note from Pastor Edd about where you can find help.

1. Help Sifting Through Ashes
2. FEMA Disaster Assistance Team
3. A Note From Pastor Edd

Help Sifting Through Ashes

Both the Presbyterian Disaster Relief and Samaritan's Purse have trained volunteers who will help you sift through ashes.  Samaritan's Purse is working with Convergence Church to help.  Presbyterian Disaster Relief has had a table at the Kaiser Center for the past few weeks and has come up to help a neighbor in Country Estates find things as well as others.  Samaritan's Purse has  said that it is unusual for a disaster like ours not to have more people signing up for help. Please do sign up for help, they are experts at finding precious items in from the remains of a fire.

FEMA's Disaster Survivor Assistance

On Saturday and Sunday from 2-6pm FEMA’s Disaster Survivor Assistance teams will be in Boulder Creek at: Bear Creek Recreation and Community Center, 15685 Forest Hill Drive, Boulder Creek, CA, 95006. 

Edd's shared this information with our church in email this week. 

This week has been a learning experience for me. Wednesday afternoon I went up to the church to help Sue hand out meals and to meet with a person that Brandon wanted us to meet. Brandon is the pastor from Convergence Church in Capitola who has been spearheading the volunteer effort around the county and who has been working with Sue at our church to help us get food and water to distribute. The person he brought with him was from the national office of FEMA. 

One of many things we learned from Kevin was the need for everyone who has been displaced from the fire or lost something in the fire, to register with FEMA. If you do have needs now or in the future might need financial assistance, you will never get it if you do not register now with their organization. He said one of the strange things that will happen once you register is you will receive in the mail a package from the SBA, Small Business Administration. Do not laugh. The SBA is the banking wing of the government that handles the disbursements and loans in times of disasters. That includes any personal loans you may desire to receive. The loans to help you rebuild will be available and the interest rate is in the neighborhood of 1% and sometimes the loans are forgivable. This is something you should not pass up. 

And then on Thursday I gathered with a group of people on the Zoom meeting for the Red Cross. There were many different agencies on the meeting talking about the things they are doing to help people during this time. Natividad Hospital can help you get temporary Medical services to assist in paying for any medical issues you might have at this time. The Red Cross also has services that allow you to connect with a mental health professional if you are in need of counseling or other types of care services. If you or someone in your home is needing services related to Disabilities, the Red Cross has a team to help you.

The Red Cross is another place where you need to sign up in order to be given services. You can do so in four ways. You can go to the Kaiser Permanente Center in Santa Cruz. You can make a phone call to 1-800-Red-Cross and select option 4 and they will help you with immediate assistance. They have a fund that will provide $450 to any household that qualifies, to help you in the recovery or displacement. They also have vouchers for other needs you might have. You can go online to redcross.org/apply if you desire to do it yourself and answer the questions. They only want to know that you are who you say you are, lived in the effected area, and were impacted by the fire in some way. 

The Red Cross has services to help you find additional resources including moving from temporary locations to your next stage in life, i.e. transportation tickets, moving trucks, rental deposits, and the list goes on and on. 

Oh, and the fourth way to connect with them, in case you are counting, you can attend the Mobile resources event this Saturday, 26^th and Sunday, 27^th at 15685 Forest Hill Drive in Boulder Creek and sign up in person. 

Besides FEMA and the Red Cross there is ongoing assistance from Valley Churches United, that has a food pantry, vouchers to Abbotts Thrift store, gift cards, to Safeway, Target, Costco, and the like. They also can provide help with utilities and hotels. Catholic Charities can also help with past rental payments that you owe or help in finding new rental housing for people displaced. And Grey Bears also has a lot of services available besides their weekly bag of food that has been going on each Thursday at our church for years.