Our Irma Story
Hurricane Irma has been our greatest test to date. Hurricane Irma came as we were still recovering from Hurricanes Hermine and Matthew, and many of the same communities were impacted. Hurricane Irma was a large storm, affecting every county in our conference. Widespread power outages made communication nearly impossible.
Conference staff and UMCOR worked tirelessly to respond. Building on years of training and experience, our newly staffed Irma recovery, working with our many local, state and national partners, brought order to chaos and opened a path for recovery.
Florida Restores, an initiative of the Disaster Recovery Ministry, became the face of our Hurricane Irma Recovery Project. The recovery began in November 2017 – 2 months after Irma made landfall twice in Florida – and closed in December 2020. The project was funded by $11,497,165 in grants which allowed us to hire close to 50 staff to provide project support (administration and operations) and direct services (disaster case management, construction coordination and volunteer management) to those impacted by Irma.
Thank you to our many partners, local and national, who supported this recovery with grants, donations and volunteers.