Fire safety lessons-Free!!

As the calendar flips to October, we say goodbye to another National Preparedness Month. Of course, here at the Red Cross, we preach the importance of disaster preparedness all year long, but we wrapped up September with a Fire Safety Day event Saturday to help residents in Buffalo's Schiller Park neighborhood prevent and prepare for the most common disaster--house fires.

Sr. Director of Emergency Services Ken Turner discussing
fire safety with East Side residents 

Senior Director of Emergency Services Ken Turner got the morning underway by telling families enjoying some light refreshments at the Schiller Park Senior Center that almost a quarter of the approximately 400 fires we responded to last year occurred on the east side of the city. Lt. Harris from the Buffalo Fire Department discussed some important fire safety tips such as how to properly use a fire extinguisher. A woman then shared the personal story of how she lost everything when her City of Buffalo home was destroyed by a dryer fire a few years ago.

Then it was lesson time. Louise Porter and Nicole Roma let the children through activities such as a maze demonstrating the difficulty of finding your way around through a fire, while Denise Herkey-Jarosch led the adults through some disaster planning exercises. One of the highlights of the morning was the opportunity to walk the NYS Office of Fire Prevention and Control's "Fire Safety House", a fully functional trailer that, among other things, can fill with "smoke" to give people a realistic demonstration of how difficult it can be to see during a fire and why it's important to have an escape plan mapped out ahead of time.

Area children get an interactive example of smoky
conditions inside "Fire Safety House"

The most important part of the morning came at the event's end, however. Everyone who came to the program enhanced their newly-learned fire safety skills by taking home a free smoke detector, courtesy of the Children's Fire & Burn Fund. This organization has given away hundreds of thousands of smoke detectors in the past 20-plus years, and President Daniel Moran told us how 36 lives have been saved when these free units were the only smoke detectors in the house when a fire started.

The event may be over, but the work continues. Volunteers will soon be following up with event attendees to make sure the smoke detectors have been installed and to see if they have discussed disaster plans with their families or neighbors. And further down the road, numbers will be compared to see whether the program--co sponsored by the American Red Cross, Buffalo Board of Block Clubs, Buffalo CERT, Buffalo Fire Department, Children's Fire & Burn Fund and Schiller Park Community Services--reduced the number of fires in this community.

Next week is National Fire Prevention Week, so there's no time like the present to schedule a free disaster preparedness education program at your school, business or organization by calling Louise at (716) 878-2230, and in the meantime, click here for more information on home fire safety and prevention!

From Amherst to the White House

It's one thing to travel to Washington, D.C. as a tourist and take a tour of the White House. It's quite another to be invited to speak at the White House! That's what recently happened to one of our volunteers, Tara Hughes!

Tara Hughes, right, speaking at White House on panel
entitled "Building Resilient Communites by Empowering
Individuals to Take Action and Strengthen Community
Capacity"

Tara was invited to be a panelist during "Red Cross Day at the White House" on Friday, September 14. "I was the only Red Cross person there talking about the response to disasters," Hughes said. "To be chosen to represent the Red Cross on this day was just awesome."

The theme of the day was "building resilient communities", focusing on what the American Red Cross does to help people prepare for and respond to emergencies. As NYS Disaster Mental Health chair, Tara has helped lead our emotional response to several disasters at home and elsewhere, including the crash of Flight 3407. "My main focus was on children and how they respond to disaster," she said. "Disasters lead to such personal stories, it made my job easy. I could just tell the stories of what I've done, training adults and raising their comfort level so they can help kids."

One of the stories Tara told was of her experience in Slave Lake, Canada in March. The town of 7,000 was devastated by wildfires in May of 2011, which destroyed over 400 homes and both apartment complexes, blocking roads. With only 40 of those homes rebuilt as the one-year anniversary and another fire season approached, Tara went to help the Canadian Red Cross, which had no disaster mental health operation. "I handed out a sheet with a list of common reactions to disaster, and someone posted it on Facebook." Hughes said. "In this town of 7,000, that posting generated over 3,000 comments. One person said they slept for the first time after reading that, because they realized they weren't crazy."

"I was asked if there one message I wanted people to walk away from my presentation with," she continued. "I said it's that information is vitally important for people to have. Children need information as much as adults. We're conditioned to try and shield kids from things we think they may not understand, but if they know what's happened and that their reaction to the situation is normal, they're better able to handle things."

There were high level decision makers from the Red Cross, White House, government partners and other organizations in attendance that day, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "While they were reading my bio, I had to remind myself to breath," Hughes said. "But once I started speaking, that anxiety and thoughts of where I was disappeared, because I was so comfortable with what I was talking about."

"Red Cross Day at the White House", Sept 14, 2012
(all photos courtesy Red Cross)

"I thought my message was very well received," Tara continued. "Afterwards, people thanked me and said how important they thought my message was. Many of them were able to connect what I had said to people they knew who had lived through disasters."

It wasn't all work and no play on this trip to the nation's capitol. Tara and the rest of the Red Cross party got to tour the White House the next day. "It was surreal," Hughes said. "We walked past a door that had a plaque reading, 'Homeland Security Conference Room', and there were a bunch of cell-phones sitting on the tables outside. So you knew there was something happening inside."

Surfing on to a new site!

If you type in www.buffaloredcross.org today, you'll see something completely different:

That's a quick screen-shot of our new local landing page on redcross.org. Pretty sharp, isn't it? Take some time to surf around and you'll see that the newly redesigned site still has all the same information about your local Red Cross, but in a new format that will hopefully make it easier to find what you are looking for. Because this landing page is part of the American Red Cross website, you'll find not only local information but regional and national news as well. And even if you don't know the local landing page's web address (it's www.redcross.org/buffaloniagara), the site uses new technology to customize your browsing experience using both location and history. That means someone looking for disaster information in Buffalo will see a different redcross.org home page than someone searching for a First Aid class in Southern California.

The old web address will automatically forward to the new landing page for a while, but to make sure you're always up to date, please update your bookmarks to the new address: www.redcross.org/buffaloniagara. And make sure you're following us on Twitter (@buffaloredcross) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/greaterbuffaloarc) for the very latest on what your local Red Cross is doing to serve the Western New York community. And of course, following this blog's not a bad idea, either!

"It was ugly"

Hurricane Isaac has faded from the news, but the devastation it left behind remains. Almost a month after the storm first hit the Gulf region, there were still 50 people staying in Red Cross shelters last night, and that doesn't even begin to get into the cleanup that needs to be done. When he returned home to Buffalo from his deployment to Louisiana, volunteer Lou Colca said several areas in the Gulf were still without power when he left late last week.

Some of the flooding immediately after Isaac hit Louisiana
Photo courtesy Red Cross

Colca worked on an Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV), serving food to residents in affected areas. "It was ugly," Colca said. "Houses still had a lot of water in them. Those that had dried were gutted, with ruined furniture piled on the lawn. I even saw tombstones that had been picked up and moved by the waters."

This was Colca's second deployment, and says he saw more devastation from Isaac than he did following flooding in New Jersey a few years ago. But as he found in New Jersey, people in the Gulf were happy to see the Red Cross on the scene.

"Even in McDonald's, people would come up and thank you," Colca said. "When we were serving food from the ERV, people wanted to give me money. Of course I told them no thanks, all our disaster assistance is free, but some of them said they would make a donation to the Red Cross as soon as they got things back together."

Because of the ever-changing situation, Colca rarely spent two nights in the same place during his week and a half deployment, as the Red Cross shifted focus to areas of greatest need. Despite never knowing where he was going to spend the night, Colca says it was happy with his experience in the Gulf. "My supervisor was very organized and kept everyone calm through all the changes. We worked well with the Texas Southern Baptists, who cooked most of the food we served, and we were able to leave any leftover food with local churches. It actually was very rewarding!"

Pete Swales (middle) of Springville, NY with two
international volunteers from Mexico getting ready to serve
meals from an ERV in Covington, LA.
24 WNY volunteers were part of relief efforts.

If you'd like to support the continuing relief efforts in the Gulf, or help ensure the Red Cross is ready the next time disaster strikes, please make a donation to the Disaster Relief Fund by calling 1-800-REDCROSS, visiting www.redcross.org, or texting the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation (charges will appear on your cellphone bill).