In recognition of September being National Preparedness Month, street banners will be posted in a 30-block corridor at 60 locations in the mid-Wilshire and Koreatown areas of Los Angeles.

“Street teams” of Red Cross volunteers will canvass these neighborhoods starting in mid-Sept. to deliver English, Spanish, and Korean preparedness information to more than 100 local businesses, schools and faith-based organizations. The primary message is: “Getting prepared is easy. It starts with YOU.”

To demonstrate how to take the first preparedness step, Red Cross volunteers will gather for a “flash mob” demonstration on Oct. 2 to perform the Drop, Cover and Hold routine. (Flash mobs are becoming increasingly popular to raise funds and awareness. Click here to see how Flash Mob America raised funds for Haiti relief.)

Volunteers interested in joining the street teams that will distribute PrepareLA literature during Sept. or performing as part of the “flash mob,” in Oct., please contact Raymond Jimenez at jimenezr@arcla.org.

The epic hurricane season of 2005 was a defining chapter in American Red Cross history. Five years ago, Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma changed the lives of millions of people across the United States and prompted a response by the Red Cross that was unprecedented in size and scope.

Even before the media images of destruction and despair jolted the nation, trained Red Cross responders were already in action. Generous donors from across the country and around the world made it possible to mount one of the largest disaster responses in American history – a response that tested the very limits of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross provided more than 4.5 million people in the affected regions with emergency assistance. Nearly 2,000 families who came to Los Angeles desperately in need of assistance after the hurricanes were directly assisted by the Greater Los Angeles Chapter, with more than $1 million in direct financial assistance for emergency needs distributed. A third of those families were provided with local hotel rooms to meet their immediate housing needs and many were also given access to medical/mental health services.

Even with this demand, the Los Angeles Red Cross sent more than 100 disaster volunteers to help at some of more than 1,000 shelters that were established in 26 states.

“This is one of the events of my life that I will never forget,” said Mary Novell, Red Cross Los Angeles Region Human Resources Officer. “Red Cross volunteers worked around the clock for months to provide Red Cross services to all the families who came here from Louisiana and other states.”

Like any event, there are always lessons to be learned. This cataclysmic event led to the development of many key partnerships between national, state and local groups. Perhaps the biggest lesson learned from five years ago is that the government and the Red Cross will never be big enough to do it all in every disaster. Everyone must play a role.

The Red Cross urges area residents to prepare for disasters, and recommends that at least one family member be trained in CPR and First Aid. Homes, businesses, schools and organizations need to have adequate emergency supplies on hand for 3-5 days.

For a complete report of the Red Cross response to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, please see http://www.redcross.org/Katrina5Year.

By Tim Altman, Communication & Marketing Volunteer

The volunteers, including members of two Red Cross youth clubs, washed 100 cots, took inventory of supplies in eight shelter trailers, installed seven battery kill switches in vehicles (to prevent dead batteries), and created shelter administration kits that will help Red Cross volunteers open disaster shelters for evacuees.

The chapter maintains Disaster Action Teams and supplies on standby at each of its district offices so when the call comes from emergency officials to establish a shelter, it is as simple as hitching a trailer and getting on the road to provide an immediate response. A shelter trailer contains all of the supplies needed to open a Red Cross shelter, including cots, blankets, administrative supplies, toys for children, and comfort kits. All volunteers were treated to lunch, which was prepared by Mass Care disaster volunteers. Learn how to help your community by becoming a disaster volunteer.

Video: Shelter Trailer Work Party (Third Annual Fun in the Sun)

Photos and video by Bob Carey, Communication & Marketing Volunteer

The Red Cross is practicing what it preaches on preparedness, as we are working to be better ready to respond to disasters of all sizes—down the street here in Los Angeles, across the country and around the world.

With a severe hurricane season predicted, the Red Cross is making a fundraising push now, asking for contributions that support our readiness for the 70,000 disasters the Red Cross responds to every year, whether they are hurricanes that affect millions of people here or abroad, earthquakes that affect thousands, or a house fire that drives one family from its home.

Here in Los Angeles, the Red Cross has responded to 141 incidents, including home fires and shelter and evacuation center openings, so far this year.

While the news media has focused its attention over the past several months on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and on Haiti, it’s important to know that the American Red Cross has responded to 29 significant disasters in the U.S. so far in 2010. These have included floods in Tennessee, North Dakota, the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, tornadoes in the South and Midwest, and major fires in communities across the country.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts between 4 to 6 major hurricanes this year. Major hurricanes are those Category 3, 4, and 5 storms that do the most damage—such as Hurricanes Andrew, Katrina, Rita and Wilma—with winds in excess of 100 miles per hour. More than 35 million people live in regions vulnerable to Atlantic hurricanes, and many in the Gulf Coast region are already experiencing hardship as a result of the oil spill.

While media and public attention comes when a hurricane makes landfall, what’s often missed are the preparations made by the Red Cross to be ready to respond well before the hurricane hits. For example, the Red Cross already has pre-positioned equipment and materials near areas that could be hit by hurricanes. In addition, the Red Cross frequently moves supplies and people closer to an area threatened by a hurricane so they can be ready to respond quickly.

These preparations cost money. For example, as Hurricane Alex gathered strength in late June and threatened the Gulf coast, the Red Cross deployed 133 people, 17 emergency response vehicles and kitchen equipment to south Texas and put other vehicles and crews on stand-by.

These disaster preparations are on top of the other floods, earthquake and fires that the Red Cross is already responding to on a nearly daily basis. The Red Cross spends about $450 million a year responding to nearly 70,000 disasters across the country – floods, wildfires, tornados and home fires.

No other non-governmental organization can respond to disasters on the size and scale of the Red Cross—but the Red Cross depends on donations from the American public to be ready. And we work hard to be excellent stewards of those donor dollars.

That’s why the American Red Cross Los Angeles Region and other Red Cross chapters across the country are asking for help for disaster relief, and we hope that people will respond. They can click, text or call to donate to the Red Cross to help people affected by disasters like hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires and earthquakes, as well as countless crises at home and around the world.

People who want to make a contribution can visit www.redcross.org, call 1-800-RedCross to support American Red Cross Disaster Response, or text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation.

Every single donation brings hope to those in need.

 “Five years ago, the American public responded to Katrina with unprecedented generosity,” said Russ Paulsen, executive director of the Hurricane Recovery Program at the Red Cross. “Looking back, I think they can be proud of what their contributions accomplished.”

The Red Cross gave 1.4 million families—approximately 4.5 million people—emergency financial assistance in response to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, which was 19 times more than the previous record. Donors gave the organization a total of $2.2 billion for people affected by the storms, which helped the Red Cross provide:

• Shelter for survivors across 31 states and the District of Columbia
• Hot meals and snacks
• Financial assistance for survivors to purchase groceries, clothing, diapers and other basic needs; and money for people to return home, make home repairs and get back to work
• Physical and mental health services to help them cope with stress and ease the trauma
• Tools to help survivors chart a path to recovery
• Disaster preparedness training so people know the steps to take to protect themselves and their families

Mary Novell, Human Resources Officer, recalls at the time of Katrina walking into her office at the West Los Angeles chapter then located on Wilshire and there was no room to move. The hallways were full of Red Cross staff and volunteers, people who had evacuated and people who wanted to help however they could.

“This is one of the events of my life that I will never forget. There was so much good will and offering from the community,” said Novell. The chapter immediately set to conducting a pre-service orientation and two class training for every spontaneous volunteer who was deployed. The chapter sent numerous volunteers to states across the affected region.

Los Angeles also served as a major evacuee point, receiving more than 1,000 individuals seeking relocation.

“Never before had the Red Cross served so many people after a disaster, and never before had so many people come forward to help,” said Paulsen. “But we learned that there are some disasters that are so big that no agency—government or nonprofit—can do it all. We learned that everyone needs to play a part.”

One critical lesson was that the Red Cross needed to increase its capacity to respond and build partnerships with other organizations that can help in large events. As a result, the Red Cross established a nationwide warehouse system and pre-positioned more than two Katrinas’ worth of disaster relief supplies in warehouses—enough to support 350,000 shelter residents. It also enhanced local, state and national-level planning efforts to plan for how it would respond to large-scale disasters and created new partnerships with national, state and local groups to help ensure that all segments of the community are served after a disaster.

In the past five years, the Red Cross expanded the number of trained disaster volunteers from 25,000 to nearly 95,000, including nearly 50,000 available to travel to disasters around the country. The organization also created tools for the public to use during a disaster, including a National Shelter System accessible online, and a “Safe and Well” website to reconnect families during disasters, including through social media. 

“The hurricanes of 2005 tested us all,” said Paulsen. “Although we’re on better footing than we were five years ago, every individual and community has to be on board in order for our country to be more disaster-ready. There is much more that we as a nation can do. Everyone—government, businesses, non-profits and the faith community—needs to work together to have better prepared communities,” said Paulsen.

The report, “Bringing Help, Bringing Hope: The American Red Cross Response to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma,” is available at http://www.redcross.org/www-files/Documents/pdf/corppubs/Katrina5Year.pdf.

Scott Underwood from the Red Cross Los Angeles Region was part of a So. Calif. delegation that recently visited Chile to learn first-hand about that country's response to the February earthquake.

The massive earthquake and tsunami that hammered Chile in February killed more than 500 people, left 800,000 homeless and caused $30 billion in damages — and provided a grimly detailed forecast of what a similar quake might do to Southern California.

“It’s about as comparable as you can get to what would happen if a big quake hit Los Angeles and San Diego,” said Dr. Lucile Jones, chief scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. And that, she points out, could happen any time.

Which is why Jones joined a fact-finding delegation from Southern California, including representatives from the American Red Cross Los Angeles Region, on a week-long trip to Chile in late July to learn first-hand about the country’s response to the quake. The local group met with more than 20 officials from Chilean emergency response organizations, including the President’s office.

Massive as the devastation was there, it was far less than that suffered by Haiti just six weeks earlier. That’s partly because of where the quakes were centered in the two countries, but it’s also because of Chile’s long experience with quakes.

The country sits in an extremely active earthquake zone and is often slammed with tremendous temblors, including the most powerful one ever recorded — a magnitude 9.5 in 1960. As a result, building codes are stringent, and many locals knew to evacuate coastal areas immediately in anticipation of a tsunami.

Chilean officials admitted, however, that the government’s response was badly hampered by a lack of preparation and coordination. No supplies were cached for immediate use; when the government began delivering boxes of food and shelter items, it was somewhat haphazard.

Chile’s experience, says Michael Kleiner, Emergency and Disaster Response director of the Red Cross Los Angeles Region, underscores the critical importance of emergency preparation – from the institutional to the individual level.

“What we saw in Chile affirms that we’re on the right track and underscores the importance of individual preparedness,” said Kleiner. “People need to be able to take care of themselves and their families for at least three days.”

The local Red Cross is preparing to shelter and feed hundreds of thousands of displaced people if a catastrophic disaster occurs here. There are currently 85 containers of mass care supplies pre-positioned around the county, said Kleiner, but the Red Cross hopes to add many more by pursuing  additional preparedness grant funding.

The trip’s participants will soon produce a report detailing what lessons Chile’s experience holds for California. There are plenty, says Jones: “There was nothing we saw there that wouldn’t happen here in a big quake.”

For more information about preparing yourself, your family, your business or school for an earthquake, please visit PrepareLA.org.

Two nursing instructors, four nursing students and one translator came to the West Los Angeles chapter where they were met by Corey Eide, Assistant Director of Support Services, Kiririth Bee Kong, Volunteer Services Coordinator and Randy Carmenaty, Health & Safety, Programs and Marketing with Melissa Crews, Client Casework Supervisor coordinating the visit. The delegation was given a tour of chapter facilities and met with individual program managers where they were able to ask questions and observe the activities of the American Red Cross.

Nursing students with one instructor and translator also made a stop at a Nurses Assistant Training Program (NAT) class being taught by the Red Cross chapter in Canoga Park, CA. Here NAT program students interacted with their Japanese counterparts. Each group was able to demonstrate various nursing exercises and train together. With the help of a translator a question and answer session was conducted following demonstrations. The Nurse Assistant Training Program and CNA Competency Evaluation Program, run by the American Red Cross, have trained, prepared and launched thousands of individuals into a new career in the medical field with confidence.

The four Japanese nursing students were selected for the trip, as the top students in their class, to represent the Japanese Red Cross Society nursing program, an opportunity that is offered only once a year.

The JRCS operates 17 nursing schools and a Midwifery School, and the Japanese Red Cross Academy operates five colleges and a junior colleges. The nursing schools and colleges offer curricula on basic nursing; the Midwifery School on midwife education; and the Akita College of Nursing on home care worker. The colleges offer curricula on both nursing and public health nursing. The Japanese Red Cross College of Nursing (Tokyo), Hokkaido College of Nursing, Hiroshima College of Nursing and Kyushu International College of Nursing have post-graduate courses. In addition, the Training Centre for Graduate Nurses offers advanced training to nurses who are to assume leading positions in their respective hospitals.

Red Cross nurses are expected to conduct relief activities both at home and abroad, in addition to everyday medical care. The Red Cross nursing institutions, therefore, offer training on various subjects to nurses to enable them to undertake relief activities in accordance with the Red Cross Principles. For example, students are required to take subjects such as the Introduction to the Red Cross and Nursing in Disaster Situations. Every year, about 30,000 nurses start their careers in Red Cross medical facilities, about half of whom are graduates of Red Cross nursing institutions.