Cross Blog

Red Cross partners with Southern Baptists to help flood victims

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

From Red Cross Chat
By Danelle Schlegelmilch

We have had some great local partners helping us out with this disaster. Today I went to the mobile kitchen that cooks all of the food we distribute. It is set up in a local church’s parking lot. We have an awesome partnership with the southern baptist churches and their disaster relief folks. They have been fabulous.

We ship all of the food in and they cook it up and get it ready to take out to serve the masses. They make around 3,000 meals a day. We have served 33,780 meals so far!

Yesterday was lasagna. Today was salisbury steaks or bbq sandwiches. They put all of the food in large red containers that keep them hot and then pack them onto our emergency response vehicles (ervs).

It was neat to see them all line up and get filled.

Volunteer Dan Chandler, the manager of the site, is an efficiency expert and has these puppies loaded in under a minute each!

Then our drivers head out into neighborhoods, the shelters, etc to feed people. The great thing about the red cross is that all of our disaster services are free and available to anyone.

It doesnt matter where you are from or who you are. We serve everyone.

Follow more updates on this and other disasters in the Red Cross Online Newsroom.

And let me tell you, disasters make you hungry.

Disaster Alerts: Tsunami, Typhoon, and Earthquakes

Friday, October 02, 2009

From Red Cross Chat
These past days have been busy for your American Red Cross.

Chronology of Events

Sept. 26:  Typhoon Ketsana hits the Philippines

Sept. 29: Typhoon Ketsana hits Vietnam

Sept. 29:  Tsunami hits American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga

Sept. 30: Earthquake hits Indonesia

Oct. 1: A 2nd Earthquake hits Indonesia

As of Wednesday morning EDT, officials in Samoa estimate that 60 villages and 15,000 people have been affected by this disaster. Tremors continue to shake the country, and tsunami alarms are still sounding.

The American Red Cross is already responding on American Samoa with our local volunteers. More staff are on the way.
If you have been in contact with loved ones on American Samoa, the best way to share information about their well-being is to register them with Safe and Well.

Stay tuned to the Disaster Online Newsroom for information about the Red Cross response to all of these events. Follow us on Twitter, and become a fan on Facebook.

The Mitchells

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Day 1
Krystal stands on her dining room chair and watches the water rise around her home.
She holds her 3-year-old’s hand with one hand and clutches her 1-month-old baby to her chest with the other.
“Lady, if you don’t get in the boat now, we’re going to have to leave you to pick up someone else,” says a firefighter perched on a rescue boat.
So Krystal steps off the chair and into the boat. Her husband, Dwayne, wades inside their home to salvage possessions by placing them upstairs.
“We are allowed to take one personal item with us on the boat,” Dwayne says. “The most valuable things in my life are the people I just loaded onto that boat.”

Day 5
American Red Cross vehicles and volunteers have been populating these pockets of Georgia, where a steady rain surged local creeks and rivers.
The water is gone, and so is most of the media that told the world to stop what they were doing and please help these flood victims.
Dwayne and Krystal receive bottled water, food and some clean-up supplies from the Red Cross. Their neighbors go to work tossing refrigerators, big-screen TVs and couches onto their front lawns.
But Dwayne and Krystal aren’t thinking about their home, which will need to be gutted. They are preoccupied with their youngest child, who has been failing hearing exams, and their 3-year-old, who was just diagnosed with asthma.

Day 9
Dwayne and Krystal have been sleeping every night since the floods in a hotel room with their children, their dog, and Krystal’s parents.
They make a trip back to their home to meet with Red Cross volunteers.
Their house, from the outside, looks almost as it always has, save a water line neatly marking the highest point Sweetwater Creek hit.
Dwayne says the creek crested at 30 feet – exactly 10 times its normal depth.
Inside their home, soggy couches are flipped on top of family pictures. Ceilings are collapsing onto tables finely lined with the creek’s soot. A high-chair, which has never been used, still stands in the garage, where you can already see mold growing.
“This is our reality,” Dwayne says.

Day XX
Dwayne and Krystal have lost everything – their home, their cars, most of their belongings.
But the couple remains astoundingly upbeat. They know that moving forward – on Day 10, Day 45, Day XX – they have their faith, their family and each other.
The media has moved on to new hot topics, which will run their course as well.
And as the media moves on, so do people elsewhere, and the floods in the Southeast become a distant memory.

But for the Mitchells, it is reality. And for the Red Cross, it is a priority.