Politics & Government

Suburban Maryland Donates, Prays for Japan

Church and charitable groups organize to help the victims of the tsunami and earthquake in Japan.

Central Maryland residents are beginning to mobilize to help the victims of Friday’s devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan and the tsunami it triggered.

The Salvation Army’s Maryland and West Virginia division, as well as the American Red Cross of Central Maryland, are encouraging people to donate money to the relief effort. The disaster, by some reports, has resulted in death tolls of more than 10,000.

Local church groups are also urging members pray for or keep disaster victims in their thoughts.

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Major Rick Mikles, the general secretary for the Salvation Army for Maryland and West Virginia, said the organization is asking for donations of money—rather than supplies—to help the Japanese.

“This [disaster] is so massive that any help that anyone can give is greatly appreciated,” he said. “It is huge.”

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The New York Times reports the Friday earthquake has left many Japanese homeless and without water or other basic services. Officials are also scrambling to evacuate residents who live near damaged nuclear power plants that were leaking radiation.

Mikles said that nationally donations via text to the Salvation Army for the Japanese relief effort had reached $69,000 as of Monday afternoon.  (To make a $10 donation, text the words “Japan” or “Quake” to 80888.) Online donations, which can be made by clicking here, had reached $911,000, he said.

Linnea Anderson, a spokeswoman with the American Red Cross of Central Maryland, said that since Friday, the Baltimore office has received between 50 and 70 calls from people asking how to donate or help with the relief effort. Donations collected from the Red Cross are transferred to the Japanese Red Cross Society, she said.

The American Red Cross of Central Maryland helps provide food, shelter and clothing for those who are reeling from a local disaster, such as fire, and it also helps direct people to help in other national and international disasters, she said.

The Central Maryland chapter covers Baltimore city and county, as well as Anne Arundel, Carroll, Harford and Howard counties, she said.

Interest in helping Japan has swelled around the compelling media images of the disaster, she said.

“These local disasters don’t make the headlines,” she said. “But when 1,600 are reported dead with thousands missing, that is a big story. You see it-- it’s right in front of you. You want to contribute.”

In Owings Mills, help for the crisis has come in the form of technical expertise.

A remote seismograph station at Soldiers Delight Natural Environmental Area recorded the quake. The devastating temblor struck 80 miles off the coast of Sendai, Japan, at about 2:45 p.m. local time and registered 8.9 on the Richter scale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Data from the station at Soldiers Delight—which contains an earthquake sensor, or helicord, and a transmitter—took the form of big, multi-colored scratches along the chart's vertical axis starting at 12:46 a.m. EDT Friday.

The helicord, placed on a concrete block in direct contact with the Earth's bedrock, can detect any vertical, north-south or east-west motion of the Earth’s crust. Once the sensor registers any seismic activity, the data is transmitted to the Maryland Geological Survey for analysis. The MGS will combine this data with other readings from around the state for further analysis.

Other efforts at helping Japanese victims have been less scientific.

The Baptist Convention of Maryland and Delaware, which serves more than 500 congregations and is based in Columbia, has been mobilizing prayer efforts.

Ellen Udovich, the Maryland and Delaware convention’s director of ministry evangelism and volunteer mobilization, said Baptist churches nationwide will be talking in the next few days about how they can ask their local congregations to respond to the crisis.

In the meantime, Baptists have been urged to pray, she said.

This weekend, she said she went to two Baptist church services in the Silver Spring area and Japan was very much on worshippers’ minds.

“I would be very surprised if there was a church yesterday of any denomination that was not praying for the people of Japan,” she said. “[In Maryland, Baptists] are praying for the victims, praying for the people who are still trapped, that they be found and get the medical care they need, praying for safety for responders and helpers, and praying for the nuclear plants so they don’t blow up.”

Members of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia are also gearing up to help, said Dana Stohr, chair of the congregation's social action council, which coordinates social justice projects.

“We are planning a collection as soon as possible,” he said.

Collection donations would go to the national association’s service committee, which responds to social disaster, he said.


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