Red Cross Update #5

[bkdelong]

Went to my second ARCMB Disaster Action Team (DAT) meeting tonight. Actually we went out for chinese for the Team Leader, (Mike Klau), celebrating his 50th birthday and 30 years as a Red Cross volunteer. I got to meet a lot more people and here some interesting "Fire Run" stories.

I also found out that I'm not the only one frustrated with the paperwork snafus and confusion at ARCMB either. It seems many seasoned volunteers are frustrated that despite having all sorts of experience many were not called for Katrina availability. The current "factory training" method is sending a lot of people down south unprepared to truly be as helpful as they could be. It seems they need to institute a policy that anyone wanting to volunteer for major disasters should spend some time on a DAT team getting local experience before shipping out to the big ones. Even if it's just being on call every night for a month to do fires. The amount of money it costs to train people, send them south, and handle them while they're there doesn't seem worth the ROI if people simply aren't prepared to handle what awaits them.

On the way back to the office we had an absolute ass drive up next to us in a Volvo and signal for the driver to roll down the window. He first asked what was going on and if there was a disaster in the area. Then when told we were driving back to the office, (we had the vehicles with us in case we needed to do a call), he said something to the effect of "so they give you a nice SUV to drive around in, eh? You should send that down South!". What an IDIOT.

The story behind the Dodge Durango was that it was bought with funds provided by the Yawkey Foundation with the express, strict provisions that said money be used for Red Cross vehicles. Apparently the Durango has become very handy for when some of the older trucks are in the shop and, in one case, another wouldn't start.

It seems the Red Cross has a long way to go both regarding internal communications, volunteer management, training, and most important - public relations and communications. Instead of writing them off, I'm going to continue working for them so more people will consider donating the monies needed to keep up their good works. Many don't realize that the Red Cross goes to most residential fires, gives people some initial money, helps them find food, medical treatment and a hotel for a few nights until they can get into the usual State and Federal systems.

I heard tonight that the Red Cross had to take out a $1B loan because it hasn't yet raised the full projected $2B needed for Katrina relief. The woman who I met at Otis and who eventually trained me, Dawn Snow, just got dispatched to Keene, NH where lingering rains from the tropical event Tammy burst a dam and massively flooded areas all over the east coast.

I look at it this way - the majority of the Red Cross volunteer system is made up of many retired seniors, college students at school, and even those displaced by disasters. I believe it's time for me, (as well as those in my generation), with my speaking & teaching ability, technology & project management skills, and need to volunteer - to help fix the holes in the Red Cross. It's possible - I've already done it here and there. They just need smart, skilled, intelligent, adaptive, proactive people willing to just jump in and do what needs to be done. The simple act of not only ENTERING Katrina Intake forms into the CAS system, but writing documentation with screenshots of the database, allowed me to easily train scores of Bank of America Data Entry volunteers. That was something I did of my own volition - I hope those of my peers who are even smarter and more ingenius than I can take the same action lest we find ourselves in similar situations with a Red Cross too overwhelmed to help.