In the last six weeks, the American Red Cross has launched a wide-ranging relief effort to help people devastated by three historic, back-to-back hurricanes—Harvey, Irma, and Maria. The Red Cross is on the ground, part of a large team of agencies and organizations responding to provide help to communities turned upside down by these three Category 4 storms.
Overall Response Efforts
· In the last six weeks, the Red Cross, along with community and government partners, has provided more than 1.2 million (1,250,000) overnight stays in emergency shelters. Shelters were opened in 8 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
- For Harvey, more than 426,000 overnight shelter stays in Texas and Louisiana.
- For Irma, more than 647,000 overnight shelter stays across six states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
- For Maria, more than 177,000 overnight stays in primarily government shelters across Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
· The Red Cross has served more than 6.2 million(6,265,000) meals and snacks, and provided more than 2.8 million (2,855,000) relief items to people in need. Red Cross volunteers have provided more than 170,000 mental health and health services to support and care for those affected.
· A total of more than 15,000 trained disaster workers, 91 percent of them volunteers, have been mobilized to support hurricane relief efforts. Many of these workers have supported multiple relief operations or deployed multiple times. In addition, nearly 6,000 spontaneous local volunteers have worked alongside the Red Cross in Texas and Florida.
·
More than 100 Red Cross workers from
around the world deployed to the
United States to help with hurricane relief efforts. Right now, more than 2,700 Red Cross disaster workers and more than 250 emergency response vehicles are on the ground, helping thousands of people affected by these storms.
Locally, our teams have deployed more than 200 volunteers to support these large operations across the country. We are thankful for not only the volunteers who have been willing and able to respond to hurricane relief, but for those who have stayed here at home to support the local efforts. In September our local teams helped 219 people who experienced the very real disaster of home fires.
*See the full story in this previous post: Help for 219 People During September, 2017