Nick Bond, the CEO of our American Red Cross Western New York Region says, “For our Western New York region, our first priority is getting volunteers and having the people to support our efforts in Florida and throughout the east coast. We are preparing to have multiple shelters open and that’s our first priority.”
He says their volunteers are specifically trained for certain jobs and certain duties. Right now they have some Western New Yorker's there supporting shelter work and another group getting ready to do down in the next couple of days to provide mental health care and spiritual care. He says once some of the storm starts to recede, they can start getting into the communities and they will start doing disaster assessment and assessing people’s homes and property.
Nick says, “We have supplies and people throughout the country spread out to prepare this so we have warehouses full of equipment so when we know there is event like this that is going to take place we can mobilize and get those things to the places of need.” It is not just Florida, Nick tays “We are really focusing on the east coast; we are going to see people in Georgia and Virginia and the Carolina’s that are going to need support. But that’s also on top of volunteers we have that are supporting still in Alaska and still in Puerto Rico after Fiona. We have multiple operations going on and it’s really the strength of our volunteers and the strength of our volunteers that makes that possible. Having those supplies and those things ready, that’s because of the efforts our donors did leading up to this and now we are going to have a significant push from all of our communities to try and support the financial need we are going to have.”
If you would like to help support The American Red Cross you can make a ten dollar donation by texting REDCROSS to 909-99. You can also go online to AmericanRedCross.orgto make a donation or to volunteer.
