Red Cross behind the scenes

By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com

Tornadoes, floods, house fires, and other sudden moments of destruction happen more frequently now. When those events impact lives and homes, the Red Cross springs into action. To find out what goes on behind the scenes when the Red Cross is activated, The Reporter spoke with Red Cross Regional Disaster Officer Janine Brown.

“Red Cross is now responding to nearly nonstop big disasters, so they’re mobilizing for nearly twice as many major events today than we did a decade ago,” Brown told The Reporter. “In the United States last year, there were $23 billion in disasters, and in 2015, there were only $10 billion in disasters. So we’ve had to really concentrate on disaster readiness and continuous response.”

According to Brown, the Red Cross is focusing on regular training sessions that can be done in person or virtually. That gives the Red Cross multiple options to get people trained to respond.

“It starts with our local disaster action teams, and those are all comprised of volunteers who are trained and ready to respond 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” Brown said. “We recently had the Danville multifamily fire where we had 50 people displaced from 49 units. That started as a disaster action team response. From that point, we help people by opening shelters, so we train people to do sheltering in a very compassionate way. It’s an emergency shelter that provides food and critical supplies, but it’s also some place where people can go to charge their phone or get information. It doesn’t mean that they have to spend the night, and we want people to know that they have a place that they can go and be treated with respect and dignity.”

Always ready

To stay prepared, local Red Cross chapters are running drills with their volunteers.

“We’re doing what we’re calling ‘thunderbolt exercises,’” Brown said. “Every chapter is doing a no-notice event. We’ve had two of them already, and we have three more to go before the end of June 30. We give them a scenario with a damaged path, and they have to open four shelters within a certain amount of time. We help them get ready for that by doing tabletop exercises prior to that, so it engages our volunteers, it answers a lot of the questions of how a response all fits together, and really gets them ready for the next big thing.”

The Greater Indy chapter had its thunderbolt exercise two days before the Danville fire, which Brown said made them very well-prepared with fresh training when that tragedy hit central Indiana.

“We were ready to go,” Brown said. “They knew what they had to do, the disaster action team responded, and they were there.”

Which is exactly what you expect from the Red Cross.

According to Brown, the Red Cross Disaster Action Team likes to meet with the family in person soon after they are notified of a need.

“We’re required to respond – or to at least initiate contact with the family – within two hours of notification,” Brown said. “Getting notified is half of the response right there. As soon as we get notified, we have volunteers ready to go. Sometimes we get notified by fire departments, and sometimes we get notified by the clients themselves, and sometimes we get notified by neighbors or an elected official.”

Care comes first

In Indiana, the Red Cross is using a method called “care before casework.”

“What we want to do is sit and really talk to the family and say, ‘We know this is a horrible thing that you’ve just experienced. You may not know everything that you need, but what right now is a priority for you?’ Sometimes family members will say things like, ‘It’s my medication, I need to get my medication.’ Sometimes they’ll say things like, ‘My car caught on fire or was burned in the home fire, and transportation is my biggest concern.’ Sometimes it’s other things like how to get the doctor’s appointment. You just never really know because it’s different for every person.”

For that reason, Red Cross volunteers will sit with people about what their personal needs and priorities are.

“Sometimes they don’t even know,” Brown said. “So it’s just kind of talking them through what we can do to help, asking them questions, and just having some really thoughtful conversations. Then we will help them make sure that they have what they need immediately, and what is most pressing to them.”

Sometimes they open a reception center to gather everybody that’s impacted to feed them and let them relax a bit and think things through while they’re waiting for information on whether they can get back into their homes.

Become a volunteer

If you would like to become a volunteer, or just donate to the Red Cross, you can call 1-800-RED-CROSS and follow the prompts. You can also go online to RedCross.org. Brown said that is the simplest way because you can do it on your own timeframe without taking notes.

“We have all kinds of positions available for people,” Brown said. “If they don’t want to respond to fires in the middle of the night, they can become a shelter worker or they can become a disaster assessment worker. When we have a larger disaster, they can go out and help us assess the damage. There’s a job for everybody. There’s logistics, there’s casework, there’s disaster assessment, there’s technology – there’s something for everybody in the American Red Cross.”

Potential volunteers can start some online training right away, and there are options to explore the possibilities before training begins.

“I tell my team all the time, if somebody wants to get on as an observer, let’s put them on as an observer before they even go on through training because it may not be for everybody,” Brown said. “I remember when I was becoming an EMT many years ago, I went on ride-alongs for three months before I spent all the time in training because I wanted to make sure it was something I could do. We can get people set up as soon as they pass the background checks and get everything signed up through Volunteer Connection. We can put them on as an observer while they are taking training.”

Brown said disaster response is a community event, not just a Red Cross one.

“One thing that I think is really important to know is that we are available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day for disaster response, but it’s our whole community,” Brown said. “It’s not just the American Red Cross. It takes a whole community to help people recover. Whether it’s somebody wanting to volunteer for the Red Cross or another organization that wants to be involved in disaster relief and response, I think it’s just really important that we know that we’re all part of one community helping our neighbors. It’s neighbors helping neighbors.”

About the Red Cross of Indiana
The American Red Cross of Indiana Region serves 6.9 million people in 104 counties in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio through its six chapters: Central, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest, and Greater Indianapolis (Regional Headquarters). The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters; supplies about 40 percent of the nation’s blood; teaches skills that save lives; provides international humanitarian aid; and supports military members and their families. The Red Cross is a not-for-profit organization that depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to perform its mission. For more information, visit RedCross.org/Indiana.