 |
Your Generous Donations Can Help Victims of Disaster:
$10 provides a comfort kit and blanket
$25 provides breakfast, lunch and dinner to an individual in a shelter
$50 provides food and shelter for one person. |
 |
About 200 times a day, American Red Cross workers respond to emergencies across the country. These can include anything from single-family fires to large disasters such as floods and hurricanes.
While many of these emergency situations don’t make headlines, their importance is still great. For instance, this week Red Cross chapters across the country responded to wildfires in California, an oil spill in Michigan and flooding in Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas and Kentucky. More than 230 people in these states looked to the Red Cross for a safe place to stay, food to eat and a shoulder to lean on.
In California alone, Red Cross shelters housed 159 people overnight who sought an escape from the wildfires in Los Angeles County. More shelters are on stand-by to become operational if necessary. So far, the fire has forced the evacuation of more than 4,000 people in Palmdale in Los Angeles County.
This month, the American Red Cross is launching a new national fundraising drive in anticipation of an extremely active hurricane season that could be made even worse by the Gulf oil spill. The American Red Cross is extremely worried about predictions of a severe hurricane season and the possibility that people will need to evacuate their homes for longer periods of time given the oil in the gulf.
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 and previous hurricanes.
The Red Cross is determined to educate its communities and practice preparedness across the country. The Red Cross has already spent $30 million this hurricane season training and preparing volunteers and pre-positioning equipment and materials near areas that could be hit by hurricanes. We’re gearing up to provide 1 million meals a day for hurricane victims, shelter 350,000 people a day and deploy more than 50,000 volunteers.
Contributions to the fundraising drive will support Red Cross readiness to respond to the some 70,000 disasters we respond to every year – whether they are hurricanes that affect millions of people, floods that affect thousands, or a house fire that drives one family from their home.
We are asking the public for their support in advance rather than waiting for disaster to strike. Please help us prepare for impending disasters by donating to the American Red Cross disaster relief fund.
