A crew from Salisbury’s E.H. Dole Chapter of the American Red Cross was helping people hit by Hurricane Fay in Florida last week when they got the call to head for Louisiana. Gustav was on its way to the Gulf Coast.
Disaster relief workers have started what could be a busy hurricane season. Already another potential hurricane, Hanna, is headed this way.
A Salisbury Red Cross staff member and two volunteers are in Shreveport, manning an Emergency Relief Vehicle designed to dispense food, according to Steve Simpson, executive director. “They’re pretty busy there,” Simpson says. Though neither Fay nor Gustav caused damage on the scale of Katrina, both forced people into shelters to wait out the storm. Some 2 million people evacuated when Gustav neared, and as they trickle back into their neighborhoods this week, they may find their homes flooded and even ruined, Simpson said. Shelters will still be needed.
Meanwhile, Simpson and his staff and volunteers are gearing up in case Tropical Storm Hanna affects North Carolina, on the coast or even right here. The storm is projected to make landfall Friday in South Carolina and could go inland ó reviving memories of the way Hurricane Hugo tore through Charleston, Charlotte and Salisbury two decades ago. Hugo was a tropical storm by the time it hit Rowan, but it downed power lines, toppled trees and ripped apart buildings, putting the county in clean-up mode for months and months.
Though the local Red Cross has 70 volunteers, contacting people over the Labor Day weekend to prepare for Hanna was a challenge, Simpson says. Ten volunteers are lined up, and more may be soon. “We’re trying to be really ready,” Simpson says. Two generators being dedicated at the Hurley Family YMCA at 10 a.m. today assure Salisbury of one large emergency shelter with its own power source, thanks to donations from Rowan Regional Medical Center, the Philip Morris Employees Fund, Rowan United Way, the city and county and Duke Energy.
The Red Cross is a United Way agency, and the organization has a national disaster relief fund. (See american.redcross.org on the Web.) It’s good to know such agencies and volunteers are at the ready when storms hit ó and willing to go wherever they are needed.