Local Red Cross Volunteers to Assist Flooding Victims

The volunteers have been trained to help families rebuild their lives following disasters.

Photo courtesy: American Red Cross

(SALEM) - Three volunteers from the Willamette Chapter of the American Red Cross in Salem will head east to assist victims in a disaster zone. The volunteers received three-week assignments to deliver assistance to flood victims in Wilksboro, Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, 700 Red Cross disaster relief workers were requested to deploy to East Coast areas affected by flooding.

Friday afternoon an additional 400 workers were asked to deploy. All American Red Cross workers have been trained to help families rebuild their lives following disasters.

In Marion and Polk Counties local disaster relief volunteers respond to an average of one or two house fires a week.

Sandy Grzeskowiak, of Corvallis will be working as a `caseworker". She will be interviewing families to determine their needs for lodging, food, clothing and medicine. This will be Grzeskowiak`s second national assignment with the American Red Cross. Last year she served in the Gulf Coast area following Hurricane Katrina. John and Linda English, of Dallas, will be `sheltering" individuals who have been unable to stay in theirs homes. This will be the couple`s first national deployment with the American Red Cross. The Englishes have just returned from Mississippi where they help rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The American Red Cross has helped people mobilize to help their neighbors for 125 years. Last year, victims of a record 72,883 disasters, most of them fires, turned to the nearly 1 million volunteers and 35,000 employees of the Red Cross for help and hope.

Through more than 800 locally supported chapters, more than 15 million people each year gain the skills they need to prepare for and respond to emergencies in their homes, communities and world.

Almost 4 million people give blood—the gift of life—through the Red Cross, making it the largest supplier of blood and blood products in the United States. The Red Cross helps thousands of U.S. service members separated from their families by military duty stay connected.

As part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, a global network of more than 180 national societies, the Red Cross helps restore hope and dignity to the world's most vulnerable people. An average of 91 cents of every dollar the Red Cross spends is invested in humanitarian services and programs.

The Red Cross is not a government agency; it relies on donations of time, money, and blood to do its work.