This afternoon, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he is sending help to Florida—as the area braces for back-to-back hurricanes.
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Now, our local Red Cross is asking for volunteers ahead of another extremely dangerous storm.
“Just like today was them, tomorrow it could be us,” Vanessa Valdez from the American Red Cross explains.
It’s been less than two weeks since Hurricane Helene’s deadly destruction hit Florida and other states in the southeast United States. Since then, our local Red Cross has been working around the clock to provide food and shelter to those in need.
“We’ve served over 400,000 meals and snacks. Our shelters are still full, and people are still trying to recover. It’s going to be a while before people can back up, get back on their feet. But as long as they need us, we’re there. We’re not leaving anytime soon,” Valdez explained.
This, as Florida prepares to be hit again by an extremely dangerous hurricane with storm surges that threaten to be 12 to 15 feet high.
“Now that Hurricane Milton is heading back to Florida, we are sending more volunteers down there. So as of right now, we have a total of 40 volunteers that have deployed, and we are expecting more to come to be able to help serve all that need it,” Valdez said.
Governor Abbott announced today that he is sending the Texas Division of Emergency Management to help with emergency response efforts. He is also sending the Texas A&M Task Force One, which includes a swiftwater rescue boat squads and search-and-rescue teams to help with flood rescues ahead of the threat of catastrophic surges.
But have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a volunteer—emotionally, physically and even spiritually?
“When you volunteer with the Red Cross and we deploy, your deployments are usually a week to two weeks on the role that you choose to do, and it is fully covered by the American Red Cross,” Valdez explained. “We provide shelter. We provide food. Usually, what we do is we will give them a card. It’s called a mission card, and it has a certain amount of money that they can use to be able to get breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then, we provide somewhere for them to stay, you know, overnight for the time being.”
As you can imagine, helping others during the storm can wear you down emotionally.
“We also have spiritual care in case you come across something that you didn’t think you were going to see. Right. And it starts to affect your mental state. We have the care there for you to be able to help you. So, we truly take care of our volunteers because we appreciate the time that they are taking to help others,” Valdez added.
But an experience that Vanessa Valdez from the Red Cross says—is life-changing.
“I speak two languages. So, I am able to help those that sometimes feel they don’t have a voice. So, being able to speak Spanish and help that person that may have been afraid to come out and ask for help because they thought nobody was going to help them or understand them, really makes a true, true, true difference, at least that, you know, in my experience,” Valdez said.
If you’re interested in volunteering - you can research more at redcross.org.