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A room full of community members gathered at the Hawkins County Natural Gas Utility meeting room to plot strategies on how to meet crisis management needs moving forward.

The Rev. John Butler, pastor of East Rogersville Baptist Church, spearheaded an effort during the cold temperatures at Christmas, 2022 to open his church as a warming station. He also talked about wildfires in the fall prompting evacuation of some area residences.

“Since I’ve been here in 2017, we’ve faced a lot of flooding issues where people have been displaced,” Butler said. “We just recently faced forest fires across the hill that affected the downtown area. Now this frigid weather. It’s been my focus for many years. I’ve had experience in disaster relief on the ground and immediate situations, evacuating hurricanes, disaster relief for tornadoes, really hitting close to home at churches I’ve pastored.”

Butler said that he reached out to DeWitte to see if there was a warming shelter being offered before stepping in.

“Four days for people in single-degree weather is a big deal around here,” Butler said. “It was just like 30-degree weather in Douglas, Georgia. Those situations require response. As a pastor, the compassionate thing is to figure out how to respond in a way that we can care for people. The last thing I want is for someone to freeze to death when I could have done something.

“Disasters don’t pick a convenient time to happen,” Butler said. “It seems like these incidents are getting closer and closer together. Just the few days our warming station was open, people came to volunteer.”

Butler said that having a crisis management plan has two reasons for implementation.

“If we’re able to work together and have a plan where it’s not just one agency’s responsibility, it brings the community together and it lightens the load on certain individuals and agencies,” he said. “We’re looking to start the conversation.”

FourSquare, Inc., a Hawkins County nonprofit that is the organization behind the Rogersville Fourth of July Celebration, among others, helped organize the meeting to help get action going.

“We have been around 15 or 16 years,” FourSquare Chairman Dr. Blaine Jones said. “Our focus has been the community of Rogersville and Hawkins County. We’re the umbrella organization for ‘People Loving People,’ who organizes a Thanksgiving dinner (for the area). We’ve had to transition that a little bit the last couple of years and have worked with Shelton (Livesay, of Of one Accord Ministry) to do that.

“God put us here to love One another and to serve one another,” Jones said. “We (are fortunate) to have several organizations that we can lean on with experience.”

Hawkins County Mayor Mark DeWitte, who is the treasurer of FourSquare, said that the first call in disaster situations would be to Emergency Management Agency Director Jamie Miller and himself.

“We have to decide the criteria in which to call emergency services,” DeWitte said.

There are natural boundaries within Hawkins County to have shelters depending on the area where a disaster could happen. A representative from Burem Baptist Church said that if the church’s purchase of the old Keplar Elementary School goes through, the building could be a possible shelter if needed.

Other buildings from throughout the county were mentioned as shelters, including the National Guard Armory, area churches, schools and more.

The recently-opened Veterans Center of East Tennessee, located on State Route 66 just outside of Rogersville, had several veterans staying there during the cold snap.

The center has showers and a kitchen that were used by veterans.

People from many churches, civic organizations and nonprofits were present to participate. A couple of representatives from the American Red Cross were also present to provide input. The representatives made it clear that Red Cross involvement usually happens post-disaster.

“We want to make this as streamlined as possible,” DeWitte said.

During ERBC’s warming station use, Butler made use of members of his church security team, as well as church security team members from other churches.

“My responsibility is their safety in every way,” Butler said.

Woody Boyd of Rogersville, who worked with the Greene County Emergency Management Agency when tornadoes touched down in Greene County several years ago, agreed with Butler that anyone working any shelter must be trained.

“If people don’t understand their roles and responsibilities, they won’t be nearly as effective,” Boyd said. “Part of this process has to be training.”

Jones stressed the need of getting a list of people interested in volunteering from the nonprofits, churches and civic clubs.

“One thing we need to do is to hit up each organization about volunteers,” Jones said. “The key is to get volunteers, people who are trained and know how to work a shelter.”

Ernie Nelson, of the American Red Cross, told Jones that volunteers for the shelters could be trained through the Red Cross.

Another meeting is scheduled to be held in the next two weeks. For more information, contact Jones via email at docjones57@hotmail.com.