Red Cross Responds to Disasters Here

By Bob Hammersla, Chairman of the Board

Recently, I heard the story of Janie Turmon. Janie cares for her mother, brother, sister and three children, some of whom have physical disabilities. She and her family were the victims of a terrible house fire.

"Everything I had worked so hard for went up in flames," she said, "We sat on the curb in front of our burned up house. I cried and cried. We were homeless. ... I had no idea where to go or what to do. What an awful feeling!"

But Janie and her family did not stay on that curb for more than a few minutes, thanks to immediate assistance provided by the Upstate Chapter of the American Red Cross.
As you may know, the Red Cross is not just a single national organization -- there are individual chapters throughout the United States.

Volunteers from the Upstate Red Cross were the ones who showed up at the scene of Janie's home fire. Resources from the Upstate Red Cross enabled them to shelter Janie and her family and see them through their ordeal.
Most of us, however, are totally unaware that the funds to create these resources come only from our community. We are the ones who make it possible for the Red Cross to respond to local disasters.

Our Upstate Red Cross has offices in Greenville, Anderson, Abbeville, Greenwood and Laurens counties. Why? Because it takes a network of volunteers and resources to serve our region, to respond to local disasters and keep us and our neighbors out of harm's way. For the past two years, our Red Cross has responded to an average of one disaster a day locally for an average cost of $1,000 per family.

So far this year, our Red Cross chapter has expended over $225,000 to help more than 798 of our friends and neighbors survive catastrophic events -- mostly single-family house fires -- that don't make the news.

The chapter offers other critical community programs, such as CPR, First Aid, Automated External Defibrillator training, lifeguard training, teaching our toddlers to swim, certifying nurse assistants to qualify them as caregivers and providing emergency communications for the armed forces.

Our local Red Cross touches the lives of 5 percent of the Upstate population. Some of the activities the chapter is involved in are chartered to the Red Cross by the U.S. Congress but not funded in any way by the government.

These programs and services are delivered by a corps of more than 700 volunteers. In fact, the local chapter is so heavily driven by volunteers, they outnumber the paid staff 30 to one. Each volunteer averages 23 hours of training to provide various Red Cross services. These community heroes donate services worth more than one million dollars a year! The chapter could not function without them.

So where does the money come from, then? Most of it comes from us -- from our responses to local fund-raising events and from individual and corporate donations (39 percent). In addition, some program funding does come from United Way (17 percent), grants and course fees.
You and I and every corporation and every citizen in the five Upstate counties benefit from the local Red Cross. It's in all of our interests to support them -- from the smallest company to the largest corporation whose employees might someday need assistance to survive a fire, or a flood, or a tornado.

The American Red Cross is always there when we need it. But what if it wasn't? How would that impact our community? Think of this:
Some 1,500 disaster victims would not receive food, shelter, clothing and other immediate emergency assistance.

More than 17,000 professional, lay rescuers and citizens would no longer be able to provide CPR and First Aid to victims in the community.

Nearly 5,000 lifeguards and children would not learn water safety.

That's why I'm excited to share that Alvin and Wanda McCall are issuing a challenge to our community:

They have pledged $50,000 and are challenging the community to match it between now and April 30 as a way to support this vital community resource.

I encourage you to take this opportunity to get involved with the Red Cross. When you do, remember Janie Turmon. Without the Red Cross, she and her family would have been left with nowhere to turn.