God’s Disaster Warriors: Into the Danger Zone with South Carolina’s UMVIM Early Response Team
SC ERT

In 2004, after South Carolina narrowly missed four back-to-back hurricanes, God began to open doors for a fledgling early disaster response program in this state. South Carolina United Methodist Volunteers in Mission provided a ten-foot trailer for a new program called the Early Response Team, and North United Methodist Church in the Orangeburg District donated $4,000 to purchase tools. That fall, a team of ten from that church gathered in Billy Robinson’s backyard to put shelving in the trailer and mount the tools. They had no chainsaws or heavy equipment, but they were ready to roll when the time came.

Since then, South Carolina’s UMVIM Early Response Team has done just that—rolled into action on countless disaster calls to rescue people from dangerous situations and give them restoration of hope, care, and the love of Jesus Christ as members of the family of God.

Throughout the past twenty years, the ERT ministry has evolved into a program claiming ten fully equipped response trailers and hundreds of volunteers, with thousands more trained to go into communities after a disaster to do whatever God requires. Over the years, they have responded to every hurricane and major tornado outbreak in the Southeast, mucking out flooded homes, tarping crumpled roofs, and using chainsaws to extricate people trapped by fallen trees.

They call themselves God’s “disaster warriors.” Here, discover the exciting story of how God used men and women across South Carolina as his hands and feet to help others in need, one disaster at a time.

Into the danger zone … bringing Christian love in action.