Local American Red Cross Chapter Sends Additional Relief to Texas
2008 September 17
The American Red Cross Tampa Bay Chapter will dispatch its Emergency Response Vehicle and two local volunteer drivers to Texas today. In the last 24 hours, 209 of these mobile feeding trucks have been mobilized in support of the Hurricane Ike relief efforts.As soon as local authorities determine a community is safe and grant access to the residents, the American Red Cross is there delivering hot meals, water and clean-up supplies in the devastated neighborhoods.
Lynn Skyrms and Kel Bartley, the drivers bound for Texas, just returned from responding to Tropical Storm Fay. Together, they spent the last few weeks driving up and down Florida’s Atlantic Coast to provide food and comfort to the residents who were coping with and cleaning up from the floods Fay caused. Like the four other local disaster workers already in Texas, these drivers have committed to at least a three-week assignment.
To ensure this type of Red Cross support continues for disaster victims, we need your help. We are calling on everyone to support the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, which allows the Red Cross to provide help whenever and wherever disasters occur.
To deploy an Emergency Response Vehicle, like the one leaving tomorrow, to the scene of an out-of-state disaster costs $2,500 on average – including fuel, lodging for the drivers and maintenance for the vehicle. Because help can’t wait and the Disaster Relief Fund is empty, we are borrowing money to cover the costs of the hurricanes of 2008. This is not ideal. The need for the Red Cross has outpaced donations during a record year of disasters.
We need your help and so do the victims of thousands of disasters across the country each year, disasters like the hurricanes of 2008. Please make a financial gift to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, which enables the Red Cross to provide shelter, food, counseling and other assistance to victims of disaster.
Donors can go online to www.redcrosstbc.org or call 1-877-741-1444.
