Helping with hurricane Rita

I got to help out with the effort to evacuate southern Texas this week, as a Red Cross volunteer. I was surprised and quite pleased by the amount of responsibility they gave me. It was a great experience, and if you can help out with the red cross (especially during an emergency), I urge you to do so.

On Thursday I got an email from Ryan Nord asking if I wanted to help out at the Red Cross that evening. I did, and I went down at 5 PM to the Austin Red Cross Chapter. Luckily I was going south because the roads were just packed going North. Everyone was getting out of southern Texas in preparation for hurricane Rita. Once at the Red Cross I filled out some paperwork to sign up as a volunteer, and they immediately put me to work (along with a bunch of other friends that had all come down from the church: Ryan Nord, Larry Webster, Ben Winzenz, David Eckholdt, Jayson Wilkinson and Stuart Bontrager).

My first assignment was filing various Katrina refugee files. There were thousand of records that needed to be consolidated. This was important work, but I was glad to see that it was just a temporary assignment.

Soon after we got started filing, we were wanted to do a new task. The local red cross needed rental cars to get some of their work done. 5 of us piled in the back of a minivan (driven by Ben (not Winzenz)) and went to the Airport. Each of us picked up a different car from Avis and drove it back to local chapter. Mine was a Chevy Malibu. I never thought I'd say this about an American made rental car, but it was fun to drive.

Back at the chapter office, we continued to file, while we waited on our next assignment. I was asked to help with the paperwork, to process all of the rental cars.

Then came my next big assignment. Larry Webster and I were asked to deliver hundreds of blankets to two different evacuee shelters. First we loaded the back of the truck with quite a few blankets (135?) Then we went to the Goodwill to buy more blankets. We delivered 10 blankets to a school in north central Austin, and rest went to Artie Henry Middle School in Cedar Park. While at Artie Henry we heard about a dialysis patient that needed to be transferred, but we couldn't help because our truck only had room for 2.

We went back to headquarters (it was now 11:30 pm), and told them about the dialysis patient. They asked if one of us could still help? Since I didn't have anything critical on Friday, I told Larry that I'd be happy to take this one. (Larry had some meetings on Friday morning, and needed to eventually get home.) I was given a van and asked to pick the dialysis patient up and 3 mentally challenged individuals at Cedar Park High and bring them to Reagan High School. Reagan High School was setup as a center for evacuees with special medical needs. When I finished that task, I was quite tired and ready to go home. It was 2:30 AM. The command center was still quite busy however. I offered to spend the evening helping them.

They were quite happy, and were going to have me help open up a new evacuee shelter in Westlake (because of the bad traffic, evacuees were still pouring in from southern Texas, even though it was 3 AM). In a last minute change of plans I was asked to relieve the Shelter Manager for the evening (again at Artie Henry Middle School.) I stayed on duty until 9AM Friday morning, as the acting Shelter Manager.

All I can say is WOW! What an experience. I would have never imagined that I would be given such interesting and rewarding work. I especially didn't think I would be helping in the capacity as Shelter manager when I volunteered on Thursday. It was lots of fun, I look forward to helping them again.