AUSTIN, Texas — A digital platform developed and launched by a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been used to help coordinate cleanup efforts in Southeast Texas after Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain in some places.
Aaron Titus' Crisis Cleanup, the nation’s largest not-for-profit collaborative disaster cleanup platform was also honored in Austin, Texas, on Sept. 17 with an award from a local stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for his service and the contributions he has made not only for Hurricane Harvey, but for 70 disasters that he has helped with.
Early on, Texas Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster and the state of Texas asked Titus if they could use crisiscleanup.org for Hurricane Harvey, and he agreed.
“Once it arrived, my world exploded, working 19 hours a day," Titus said. "After a week or so, I got a call from the state of Texas and FEMA, and the tenor of the meeting was that they were concerned. They were relying heavily on Crisis Cleanup for the response.”
Knowing he is a one-man show, Titus, who lives in Colorado, was urged to come to Texas so they could support him “and make sure I don’t die,” Titus said. “They insisted I bring my team. I don’t have a team. They told me to get one or they would provide one for me.”
Titus brought his wife, Jennifer, and a colleague who had helped with another disaster, Ross Arroyo, along with his wife, Miriam, from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. While they were scheduled to be in Texas until Sept. 23, Titus anticipated that he would spend many months working on the Harvey disaster.
Ross Arroyo said that he agreed to help out because he sees that Titus “loves his fellowman and if he can be crazy enough to spend the last five years doing this full time, I can too.”
FEMA estimates that 1 million households have been affected by Hurricane Harvey and 1,650,000 hours of volunteer work is projected to be needed in the weeks ahead, more than 22 million hours to help those affected by the disaster.
Austin area Mormon Helping Hands organizer Lloyd George explained how much better Harvey cleanup efforts have been as they have gone through Crisis Cleanup, compared to three years ago when a volunteer team was deployed following a disaster and there wasn’t much direction on how to help.
The difference has made an impact, he said.
“We have had boots on the ground. There’s an input form (on the website) and that creates an incident report. There’s a little boot that shows up. That little boot represents somebody who’s just had their guts ripped out of them, as far as their personal belongings in their house," George said. "It was a great opportunity because you could pull down a list of locations. You could delegate that out.
“We can take it down to the address and say here’s the name, the contact person, the phone number,” George added. “Our volunteers knew where to go and they just headed out. There’s never been a finer hour of people just going and mucking out people’s homes.”
Frank Rojas, from the United Methodist Committee on Relief and part of the Rio Texas Conference, which includes everything west of Houston, referred to Crisis Cleanup as his favorite tool to use in disaster relief because it makes it easy to find out exactly where help is needed.
“As a volunteer, I can actually see where things are. I want to use that information not just for the relief phase, but also for follow-up,” Rojas said.
Crisis Cleanup received 800 calls a day in the weeks after the storm, and it was training volunteers to help keep up with the demands.
When Steve Tedjamulia, the Latter-day Saints public affairs representative in the Austin Texas Oak Hills Stake, presented Aaron and Jennifer Titus with the Christian Service Award, he said, “This man has blessed tons of people on his own dime, and he did this all on his own. I’ve started several businesses and I can just see what my wife has gone through, how she’s had to take care of the kids, and there’s no way I could have done it without her.
“With his wife, and by the way, they have eight children, they’ve done all of this amazing work,” Tedjamulia said.
Jennifer Titus expressed her thanks and said, “I’m very grateful to be married to a man who looks outside of himself.”
She explained how occasionally they have not been unified on things, but are good at compromising and communicating well and that Crisis Cleanup is something they are indeed unified on.
“I manage the house and he takes care of saving the world,” Jennifer Titus said. She said that without the volunteers, Crisis Cleanup is nothing.
Jennifer Titus said that it is humbling to see her husband take the efforts of thousands of volunteers and multiply it, and see people who have gone through a life-changing and devastating experience have hope again.
“Pain and loss can temporarily eclipse hope, and when that happens, faith and sometimes sheer determination can be a temporary substitute,” Aaron Titus said to the audience after getting the award.
Titus, author of "How to Prepare for Everything," who is also the president of the Mountain West Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, which covers 11 states, shared that, “If you’re holding a shovel, you are my brother or my sister. I have never once had a discussion about the doctrine of the Trinity, or Nirvana, or any other doctrinal thing, and I love it.
“There’s a saying in disaster recovery that goes like this, ‘Disasters knock down fences and make good neighbors,’ and boy, is that ever true.” Titus said.
Titus also pointed out several groups who help in the recovery process.
“When we as Mormon Helping Hands get all done, they don’t have any walls. And they need walls. Thank goodness for Habitat for Humanity, who will come in and build walls. They need food. Thank goodness for the Baptists who have these mobile kitchens and will turn out 20 and 30 thousand meals per day.
“If you need donations management, you call the Seventh Day Adventists. If you need case management, you call the Catholics. And if you need 10 people, for heaven sakes, do not call the Mormons. We are lousy at 10. Call us if you need a hundred, or a thousand, or 10,000,” Titus quipped.
Titus acknowledged FEMA guests in the audience and shared what he feels is the purpose for the collaborative work of everyone. It is “to restore hope, rather than to create self-sufficiency or self-reliance, by ministering to physical, emotional and spiritual needs,” Titus said.
Kelly J. Larson is a coordinating council media specialist for the Austin area of the North America Southwest Region. She studied journalism at Brigham Young University and the University of Colorado Boulder.