No disaster is a small disaster.
by Mariama Fofana, American Red Cross of Colorado Public Affairs Volunteer
On the evening of March 13, Stacey Sanders was home when she noticed a heavy smoke smell. She decided to walk around her building to find the smell’s origin and saw a fire growing from her neighbor’s chimney. Helpless, Sanders called 911 as she watched the flames engulf her home of 17 years.
Sanders is unsure how the American Red Cross’s Disaster Action Team (DAT) found out about her situation but she assumed the Aurora Fire Department made the call.
“I was sitting in an ambulance with a paramedic and I got a call from the red cross,” Sanders said. “I was like, wait, what? I had no idea the Red Cross did small fires or individual catastrophic events like this.”
“It was unbelievable,” she added. “It was reassuring to know if I hadn’t had a place to stay, I would have resources immediately available to me. I was unbelievably reassured during one of the scariest times in my life.”
One of Sanders’s main concerns after the fire was replacing her medications as soon as possible. She has Parkinson’s disease and requires medications daily but was left with nothing after the fire. With the help of the DAT volunteers, Sanders had her medications replaced within 24 hours.
“The Red Cross was one of the most reassuring parts of this whole nightmare,” she said while talking about her experience with the volunteers. “If I didn’t have resources available to me, I had options.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Disaster Action Team has been minimizing in-person contact. One of the hardest parts for volunteers was the inability to be physically present to comfort those experiencing disasters. However, volunteers were still eager to virtually assist wherever they were needed.
“There’s usually not much for them to lean on in that one moment where they’re being escorted out of their residence and feel like they’re left in the streets with nothing,” Tee Than, one of the volunteers who worked with Sanders, said. “To be able to provide resources at that moment makes me feel relieved. They’re able to go on their way and know where to go and not feel just left behind with a house that’s been burned down and their items left behind.”
From house fires to multi-state natural disasters, the Red Cross responds to an average of 60,000 disasters every year. To learn more about the Disaster Action Team’s work and ways to get involved, click here.
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