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Volunteers on Ice

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January 24, 2013
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DSC_0168_7138In the early morning hours of January 23nd, there was a serious house fire in East Norriton, Montgomery County. Since my volunteer role at the SEPA Red Cross began, I’ve been in the habit of checking the local news each morning. That’s how I saw the interview with the Montgomery County fire chief where he explained that the recent cold snap created some special challenges for the responders. It took a while to find a working hydrant. Water froze on contact with everything it touched: the grass, the pavement, the house. The hoses froze to the pavement and could not be moved once the fire was extinguished. Two fire fighters were hurt slipping on the ice. Two residents were hurt jumping out of a second floor window. It is safe to say that 10 degree temperatures made a terrible situation even worse, but the fire fighters were there to do their job and they deserve our admiration and respect.

The American Red Cross Southeastern Pennsylvania was also there. Volunteers rose in the middle of the night to be at the scene and care for residents forced out into the cold. They were there with financial assistance for food, clothing, shoes and winter coats to four people affected by the fire. Frozen hoses are not the only challenging consequence of a cold snap. Cold and fire are old friends. When heating bills become high and un-payable, people take risks to create heat. Stove burners are turned to high, a space heater overloads a socket, and an oven is turned to 500 degrees and left open.

In the last few frozen days, our volunteers responded to 10 fires in all five Southeastern, PA counties. We helped 48 people who were forced out of their homes. In every case, Red Cross volunteers were there side by side with fire fighters to do the other half of the work: care for the people involved.

These volunteers are extremely special people. Most of us are good at caring for our family and friends; very few of us are good at caring for strangers in 10 degree temperatures at 2:00 in the morning. But still Red Cross volunteers are there. We were there this week. Our volunteers are dedicated middle of the night risers, unstoppable on ice and determined to provide relief. We will see our region through the winter months, no matter how cold it gets

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Below is a video of a separate fire response, this one Friday evening 1/25/13 in N. Wales, Montgomery County. It further underscores the point made above.

Isaac and my Personal Inconvenient Truth

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August 25, 2012
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As I write this, Tropical Storm (likely soon to be Hurricane) Isaac is barreling toward Florida and the Gulf Coast. Hundreds of thousands of people are potentially in harm’s way. It’s not a place most people want to be going. But right now, hundreds of Red Crossers are going there. They are headed there in advance of Isaac to help set up shelters, position equipment and supplies, and provide minor medical help and mental health counseling.

Volunteers Kay and Fred before leaving for Florida.

Volunteer Janice Winston being interviewed by a local TV station moments before leaving for Florida.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s what Red Crossers do. They go into places before, during, and after a natural disaster when most people are leaving. 15 people from my chapter are there now. I, however, am not one of them. I’d like to be, but I’m not and truth be told, part of me really wishes I was. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. But for something like this, as part of the American Red Cross Advanced Public Affairs Team (APAT), I would normally be on one of the first planes down there. Being an APAT member means being the voice and sometimes the face of the Red Cross during a national disaster, like a hurricane or tornado. I can sum it up in a DM I got over twitter from a fellow APAT member that asked the question, “Why aren’t you deploying sir?”

My answer: I’m sitting this one out, because I’m about to go on vacation. I know “boo-hoo” for me. “Poor Dave is missing a hurricane to go sit on a beach in the sun with his family.”

Again, I’m not complaining. But hear me out. I would never wish for a disaster, but what is happening in Florida is exactly what I’m trained for. It’s the most rewarding and exciting part of my job. There are about 50-60 other APAT members at the Red Cross, many of whom are in Florida now. They are great to work with. And they are already doing an amazing job. I miss being a part of that.

A Red Cross APAT member on the Weather Channel talking about preparing for and responding to Isaac.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s funny, today I’m sort of (but not really) complaining that my vacation was interrupting my ability to respond to a hurricane. But this time last year, I was complaining that a hurricane was interrupting my vacation.

Irene hit this very same weekend. The same weekend my vacation was supposed to begin. But unlike Isaac, Irene was striking where I live; where my Red Cross Chapter is. Not helping was not an option. I spent the first night of my vacation in a Red Cross shelter instead of walking the boardwalk eating junk food. Over the next few days, I helped my chapter and our national headquarters manage media and response in the Philly area. My vacation got delayed. I was bummed. My family was even more bummed. Mother Nature had picked an inconvenient time to show her wrath.

Same goes for this week. Any other week, I could help with the Red Cross response. But I wasn’t about to miss my vacation again. I am not about to disappoint my family again. The Red Cross will manage just fine without me.

The moral of this story is not that Dave likes to complain, though I realize it is easy to draw that conclusion. The moral is, disaster never waits for when it’s convenient. Mother Nature can choose to be angry at any moment. She can disrupt my life, your life, all our lives at the drop of a hat.

That’s why you need to be prepared. That’s why you need to have a plan for what you would do if Mother Nature was suddenly inconvenient. Don’t just assume it can wait until tomorrow. If you need help with developing that plan, go to our website, RedCrossPhilly.org. It has lots of great, free advice.

A secondary moral is to be thankful for the Red Cross and the many, many thousands of volunteers willing to have their lives interrupted on a moment’s notice to go into a potentially dangerous place, to help people they never met recover from something that’s usually far worse than just an inconvenience.

How to get your boots on the ground as a Red Cross Volunteer

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August 24, 2012
Disaster Response, Trainings
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Have you ever contemplated the difficulties people face when a natural disaster strikes? Have you ever known someone who had been so moved by the scenes of a disaster that they wanted to help? With Hurricane warnings going into effect down in the Caribbean and parts of Florida bracing for Hurricane Isaac, the American Red Cross SEPA chapter is bracing to respond to Hurricane Isaac as well by sending 11 volunteers to Florida with preparation and relief efforts in mind in the event that the hurricane makes landfall.

Let’s talk about those volunteer efforts. It’s always phenomenal to see people help other people. In those moments strangers become family. Volunteers are enormously valuable during a disaster. Still, during disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, there were such a vast number of people who wanted to help, that some showed up to disaster locations without an affiliation to work with or even a place to stay. This isn’t the case for Red Cross volunteers, as the Red Cross champions volunteer efforts during a disaster and makes sure every volunteer has a purpose and a place. Most of all, the Red Cross encourages organized volunteer efforts and invites you to become a Red Cross volunteer.  Here at the Red Cross SEPA Chapter and at every Red Cross chapter nationwide, volunteers who are sent to major distress sites gain experience first by volunteering with their local Red Cross chapter. The Red Cross trains individuals before they are sent out to provide assistance and the Red Cross will also make sure that their volunteers have food and lodging in anticipation of venturing to a place that may be far from home.

Disaster relief work has never been easy. The will to volunteer in itself is a vital component to becoming part of a relief effort team but there is a reason the Red Cross offers training to individuals before they set out to help. Disaster relief efforts can be demanding and necessitate lengthy hours of service. The environment, in which one works, can sometimes be in uncomfortable climates or at uncomfortable temperatures. Volunteers must be ready to engage in dialogue with people who may be in different stages of emotional distress. Volunteers must also be prepared themselves to come to a place where everything has been turned upside down after a disaster.

If you want to respond to large disasters like Katrina, Irene, or even Isaac, the Red Cross wants you and will make sure you are trained and prepared when the time comes to respond. In fact the Red Cross has a Disaster Services Human Resource (DSHR) team that evaluates individuals, making sure that they are in a fair state of health, making sure that they are properly trained and making sure that they are assigned according to their desires and strengths to serve. This is so volunteers can work in the capacity they are most comfortable. This is also because the Red Cross not only cares about the survivors they help but also the Red Cross team members who provide that vital help.

Want to become one of our heroes? You can… just click here to get started!

Our volunteers talk about leaving for Florida to help with relief efforts there.

Jabril Redmond, guest, volunteer blogger

Seeing the Mission and Vision in action

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August 17, 2012
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Here as a volunteer blogger for the SEPA chapter, I’m getting a chance to learn some of the things that the Red Cross does that don’t make it onto your local news but does make an impact on people’s lives.

Whether it’s mental health volunteers helping out in Colorado or the SEPA Communications team being the first on the scene to help survivors access the help they need following a fire in Philadelphia, I’m also learning that the hundreds of Red Cross chapters nationwide and their volunteers adhere to one vision and one mission.

Two Red Cross Southeastern Pennsylvania workers console a woman displaced by a fatal fire in West Philadelphia.

The mission is to “prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors.”

The vision is to turn compassion into action so that:

.all people affected by disaster across the country and around the world receive care, shelter and hope;

..our communities are ready and prepared for disasters;

…everyone in our country has access to safe, lifesaving blood and blood products;

….all members of our armed services and their families find support and comfort whenever needed; and

…..in an emergency, there are always trained individuals nearby, ready to use their Red Cross skills to save lives.

Both are daunting tasks and responsibilities.

Yet both were demonstrated during the number of tragedies this past summer. Tragedies that ranged from but not limited to house fires, water main breaks, and some natural disasters on the local level as well as wildfires and mass causality crises on the national level.

American Red Cross Southeastern Pennsylvania mental health volunteer meeting with a man displaced by the Colorado wildfires.

Through them all, the American Red Cross was there to help and through their actions I begin to realize how volunteers live the American Red Cross mission and vision everyday.

- Jabril Redmond, volunteer guest blogger

How Social Media (and local news) got disaster victims the help they needed

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August 14, 2012
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A disaster and media response coordinated 140 characters at a time.

Most people would agree social media has great value during large scale disasters. I can tell you first hand about the countless times I used social media to spread the word about thunderstorms, tornadoes, blizzards and fires to thousands and thousands of people at once.

But few can see the value in social media for the smaller scale disasters, like a single home fire or when a car crashes into a house. You may be thinking  ”Car into House, that’s random.” Maybe so, but that’s exactly what happened last night and what I want to use to demonstrate the important role  social media can play even during a small disaster.

Yesterday afternoon I saw a tweet from Fox 29 reporter Chris O’Connell that he was working on a story for the 6pm news about a family forced from their home after a car smashed into their house. I emailed Chris with information on how the family could get help from the Red Cross. I didn’t get a response right away. Since I wanted to make sure the family got help as soon as possible and seeing the possibility the Red Cross would get positive news coverage (I am the Communications Director after all), I got impatient. So I replied to one of his tweets saying the Red Cross could help.

Here is the initial tweet exchange between Fox 29′s Chris O’Connell and myself

I got a tweet back a little while later from Chris saying the family was calling for help now. Our emergency response center (We call it the Bridge) dispatched a team immediately and help was soon on the way. That was a very gratifying tweet to read. It may be a small thing to just about everyone else, but a big deal to me.

The family was very upset. Their reaction was typical of what our volunteers see everyday after a fire or other disaster. It’s very traumatic to lose your home and the uncertainty that comes with it. And even though the Red Cross couldn’t fix everything, it could provide some comfort, some hope, in what can seem like a hopeless situation.

I’ve included below an edited version of how Chris O’Connell’s 6pm and 10pm stories turned out and the prominent mention the Red Cross got in them. But the most gratifying part was not the publicity we got, but rather, the knowledge that the family last night and for many nights to come would be staying at our one of a kind Red Cross House – Center for Disaster Recovery with a roof over their heads, clothes on their back, and food in their stomach — soon to be on the path back to independent living, thanks to the Red Cross.

 

Digital Operations Center: A Bigger Picture for Facebook & Twitter

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March 16, 2012
Communication
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Yesterday, the American Red Cross and Dell unveiled the Digital Operations Center, utilizing social media trends to disperse validated information during a crisis and to accurately target areas that need help.

Sounds great, but what does that mean for us? As a frequent visitor to social media forums, such as Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr, I wasn’t sure how this would serve me. I’m certain I could find vital information on my own when there’s a crisis at hand. But there is a bigger picture!

In my junior year of college, I lived in a five-bedroom house with my close friends. As fun as it was, it could be chaotic at times. Different utilities were in different names; our landlord would communicate with us by calling only one of us at random; and notes to remind fellow housemates to do their assigned chores that week went unnoticed and were tossed in a shuffle of bills, flyers and take-out menus.

Then, upon returning from winter break and our respective homes, someone took a trip to the dollar store. They bought a magnetic notepad to post messages from the landlord on the refrigerator, bright magnets designated for each utility bill, and a tray for each person’s letters and personal messages. The house was more organized and streamlined, and we could easily identify problems if and when they arose.

With the new Digital Operations Center, the public can work together with the Red Cross using social media forums to give in-the-field observations and to get answers to their questions, not to mention emotional support.  Its function is a lot like the message system my roommates and I set up – we all knew our weekly chores and that we’d have to broadcast any news from our landlord, but the messages were clearer and more direct when they were sorted and organized for us.

The Digital Operations Center will collect all those little status updates and tweets about an emergency or disaster, and use them to anticipate the needs of affected areas. For example, someone may post about a hurricane they drove through on their way home. The American Red Cross can respond with safety tips, list available shelters, and repost about the hurricane to inform neighboring communities.

In addition, the Digital Operations Center can track trends in social media. They’ll be able to tell if an area is without electricity, or that another area is without water. That way, the Red Cross can avoid discrepancies and accurately assist those in need of water rather than shelter, or in need of blood donations rather than electricity. People on Facebook and Twitter can turn to this official source for updates, rather than relying on all the different information posted by their friends.

Just about everyone is using social media these days, and now the Red Cross can actively listen for distress. The center is going to be powered by a new digital volunteer program, where volunteers around the country can respond to questions from the public and provide both critical information and reassurance.

Click here for more information, or go to www.redcross.org

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