 Joe White was eager to lead a tour of the Red Cross’ offices in Creve Coeur. Historic posters from past emergencies covered many of the walls. One of the most popular, White said, shows Clark Gable in an Army uniform, reminding Americans of their duty during World War II. A focused yet courtly man, White conveys a sense of order and that he knows how to handle any emergency in which the Red Cross might be called on to assist. He has a strong service spirit and likes to say, “No volunteers, no Red Cross,” as a reminder of the nature of his agency. He can call on 1,500 local volunteers, has a staff of 84 and an operating budget of almost $10 million. What keeps you awake at night? Our general lack of preparedness as a country. That cuts across lots of possibilities. We are on the New Madrid Fault. Last July, we had tornadoes. In 1993, we had the Great Flood. We have power outages. We’re on the Dirty Thirty list for a terrorist attack because of the Arch, tourism, the defense industry, Boeing. The American Red Cross has targeted cities that have to be more ready than most, and St. Louis is on that list. How many cities are on that list? Ten. It’s the major coast towns and St. Louis and Chicago. What do you need to do and what do individuals need to do? Everything starts with individual preparedness. That is one of the great lessons learned from (Hurricane) Katrina. Everyone realized when that happened it would have been much, much easier to respond to a disaster if everyone were prepared. A major part of what we are doing today is to get Red Cross ready. The St. Louis chapter is taking the lead on a national incentive on readiness. Anheuser-Busch is underwriting it, and we should have, in the next few months, a plan out there on what we call “Getting yourself Red Cross ready.” What does that mean? It starts with making a plan. If a disaster strikes, do you know where your kids are? Do you know how to get out of your house? The next piece is to build a kit. Water, a flashlight, a radio with a crank (to charge the) battery. Your prescriptions. If you run out, the Red Cross will fill those for free. How about if you’re a new parent? Milk. Diapers. The standard things you have to get out of your house, whether it’s a fire, a power outage, and it’s too hot or it’s too cold and you’ve got to get out in a hurry. You grab the things you’ve got and you leave. They’re not that expensive to pull together. If you took the time to go through your house, you’d find everything you need to build a kit. You mean put them in a suitcase? A cardboard box? Those will work. I gave my kids disaster kits for Christmas last year. They got ‘em in their (car) trunks. My daughter’s a doctor, and she laughed at me. I said, “You may have your scalpel, but do you have batteries?” The things you need for a three-day period are simple. By the time three days are over, you start getting the emergency community to rally around. Shelters are open. We’re serving three meals a day. This isn’t just granola bars, is it? It’s non perishable food, batteries, a first-aid kit, blankets, ponchos, a radio. A three-day supply of water, gloves, duct tape and plastic (to cover broken windows). Are people wiling to do this ahead of time? Isn’t it hard to get people to pay attention? When we had the power outage, everyone is willing to listen. For a while, our phone is ringing off the hook. Then it died down four or five months later. Now we are trying to come up with a ready rating. This is the Anheuser-Busch piece. Everything will be build around community education. Are some disasters more probable? This chapter responds to 1,200 fires a year. Three a day. Last year, we had 1,210. If a family is burned out of its home, we are the first on the scene. Whether we pick it up on the ham radio, or our volunteers hear it, or we get a phone call from a fire department, we have disaster action teams, called DAT teams, riding around town in trucks, 24/7/365. No volunteers, no Red Cross. It always seems it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and it’s February and you’re freezing your tail off and you’re watching your house burn to the ground and you’ve got nothin’. So the Red Cross shows up. On those trucks, we’ve got blankets, water, first aid kits, granola bars and food. On the spot, we get them stabilized, warm. Get them liquids. Then we’ll get them into a hotel or some kind of safe environment for a two or three-day period. We can give them up to $1,200 to $1,500 to replace the food they lost, their bedding, the essential things to get them started back in their homes again. If they can get back into their homes and they need clean-up kits, we give them that as well. Once we get them stabilized, we pass them on to our partners, mostly United Way agencies like the Salvation Army. They pick up the intermediate to long-term care. Are these things free? There are three things we do at the Red Cross. Disaster response is the big one. There is no charge whatsoever for that. Number two is services to armed forces. We are still required by Congress to get critical information from home to people (in uniform) at home and abroad. If the bread-winner is deployed, we will step in and offer services to those families. We are very busy at Scott Air Force Base. We also take care of men and women who come through the St. Louis area. You will see in the next six to nine months even greater emphasis by the Red Cross on services to members of the armed forces. This is what got the Red Cross started 126 years ago. When reservists and Guardsmen come back from their tours, sometimes all they have is the clothes on their back. Their family is there, but they may need mental health services. They need jobs. Everything we do for the armed forces is free. The third thing is international Holocaust tracing from World War II. Last month we got Chapter of the Year Award for our tracing services from the international arm of the American Red Cross. Anything else? We do charge for CPR and our defibrillator training. Shouldn’t defibrillator training be free? We sell defibrillators at a very modest profit. We are trying to get enough money back in here to cover expenses and expand programs. |