LDS Church News - Pure religion: A command post

Published: Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012

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Our ward's meetinghouse served as a search and rescue command center after a 79-year-old Howard Nichol went missing on Tuesday, Oct. 9, in Monongalia County, W. Va. Mr. Nichol suffered from Alzheimer's and had wandered from the home he shared with his daughter and son-in-law in the Cheat Lake area.

On Wednesday morning, Oct. 10, I received a call from Mike Wolf, director of search and rescue in Monongalia County, asking me if they could use our building as a command center for the ongoing search and rescue effort. Rescuers needed food, rest and rest rooms and our building was a perfect location. I agreed to let them use it.

Earlier in the year, several of the brethren in our ward were certified as emergency responders for a Community Emergency Response Team. The county officials had asked us at that time if we were willing to let responders use the church ... in the case of an emergency. Within an hour of Mr. Wolf's call, the professional search crews set up their command post in our cultural hall. By morning light, volunteers began to pour into the church looking for assignments to search. What I thought would be a 12-hour event soon became a large-scale, four-day operation. Sister Marijke Schnopp, ward Relief Society president organized the sisters to prepare large meals for hundreds of volunteers each day. Over the next few days, between 400-500 local volunteers entered the building to help. Roughly 75 professional search and rescue personnel from four different states participated in the search.

Most of the volunteers were residents who lived in and around the ward's neighborhood. Many of them had never been in an LDS Church before and were pleasantly surprised to see how eager we were to help out in the community. Red Cross volunteers said they had never received such great support from any group for an operation like this. The search and rescue directors said the Church facility was perfect and support was extraordinary.

The full-time missionaries pitched in with the search and rescue, meeting hundreds of local residents under friendly circumstances.

The search came to a tragic conclusion ? searchers found Howard Nichol's body near his home on Saturday, Oct. 13.

? Bishop Brad Jensen Morgantown 2nd Ward, Clarksburg West Virginia Stake

Source: http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/62983/Pure-religion-A-command-post.html

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