For over 20 years, it has been our objective to serve others in the name of Jesus Christ by meeting the physical and spiritual needs of individuals and communities suffering in times of disaster. Colorado Baptist Disaster Relief (CBDR) is a National Disaster Organization with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) which is based locally in Colorado. Our combined 42 state organizations have over 65,000 volunteers.

These volunteers have been trained in disaster relief responding to floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, earthquakes and many other types of disasters both domestically and abroad. All of our CBDR/SBDR volunteers are trained, credentialed, and background checked. These volunteers are prepared to deploy in bringing Help, Hope and Healing to those that been affected by disasters.

Greeley-Wray-Yuma

From June 3 through July 1st CBDR served in Greeley, Yuma and Wray doing clean-up and mud-out of homes after the rain and massive hailstorms that went through these three areas. When we arrived, it looked like a tornado had gone through as the leaves were stripped off many of the trees, windows, gutters and siding destroyed. Several of the homeowners that had flood water in their basements and into their homes had tried to take care of things on their own, but found it was very difficult to do. When CBDR was asked to assist and we arrived, the mold had already begun to grow on the walls and other areas of the homes. Even some homes had black mold in the insulation of their ceilings. This was a concern that we had that people would not realize that the mold had already begun to grow and may have just covered over the areas. To help the communities we shared with community leaders about the possible health conditions due to the massive mold. We were able to set up at the Fairgrounds in Wray to give pre-mixed SHOCK WAVE to homeowners with directions on how to properly use it. We had a great turn out and some of the people asked us if we would come to their homes to assess the mold situation. Even after several weeks after the storms there was still moisture in the walls and flooring and that mold continued to grow.

We worked in several homes in Greeley that were over 100 years old and had lots of damage from the floodwaters and mold. The basements are more like crawl spaces and very wet mud that had to be brought up in buckets with a bucket brigade. We assessed damage at a couple of churches that had damage that was beyond our scope of work.

We were asked by the Emergency Manager in Yuma and Wray if we could help the Hillcrest Care Center that had lots of window damage from the large hail that hit in the area. On arrival we found that over 20 large windows had been broken and were covered by sheets of plywood. So, for 3 weeks these patients had no windows to look out of and sat in their rooms with just a light. Can you imagine what that would be like? I wish you could have seen their faces when they saw our team come into their center to start working on removing the plywood to cut out areas to place plexiglass for them to be able to see outdoors again! The sweet smiles and words of thanks were precious! From Darkness to Light and they are now enjoying being able to see the sunlight. It would have been another 8 weeks before a window company would be able to come to replace the windows. Bringing: Help, Hope and Healing is what was accomplished on all the jobs that were done.

During this deployment we had 765 volunteer hours, 169 volunteer days and were able to assist owners of 48 properties during this time. I want to thank our CBDR volunteers who spent many hours of hard work in Bringing: Help, Hope and Healing to those in need during this difficult time. I want to thank One Hope Church in Greeley for allowing us to use their property for housing our volunteers and parking our CBDR vehicles. The last two weeks of our deployment, UNC Greeley gave us use of a house on campus to house our teams.

Thank you for your prayers and support as we minister to those in need locally and out of state during this busy year of storms and wildfires. If you are interested in being an active part of CBDR let us know. We can always use more volunteers!