By Rick Padden, American Red Cross Public Affairs
Name: Barbara Watts
Location: Windsor, CO
Length of service: 3 years
GAP: Disaster Health Services
Deployments: 3
Wearing a mask to protect against Covid-19 has never been a problem for Barbara Watts. She wore one as a registered nurse for 46 years in hospitals, before retiring three years ago and joining the Red Cross.
“In disaster situations, I go in as a nurse to support the DAT response,” she said.
When they have forgotten medications, medical equipment, glasses, etc. at home. I try to get them what they need, medically, and then do follow-up work to make sure they’ve received everything.”
Watts hasn’t lost her strong, east-coast accent, or perhaps has nurtured it intentionally? Regardless, she’s originally from Rhode Island, and moved out to Colorado 13 years ago to be closer to her three children and five grandchildren. “They were just having too much fun without me,” she said.
She began her nursing work at the Medical Center of the Rockies when it first opened. “I was there when the first stones went down as they were building, she said.”
Watts has been deployed three times with the Red Cross – the first time to Walsenburg, CO, in 2018 – where a shelter had been set up to support evacuees from fires in Costilla County and the Durango area. That particular shelter did not fill up, but Watts said the few who were there “were very high maintenance, and needed long term nursing care. We don’t do that, so we helped them get placed.”
In January Watts virtually deployed to help some 300 elderly people who’d been displaced by an apartment building fire in Tennessee. “That one involved 12-hour-days, mostly on the phone,” she said, “as there were multiple medical problems and needs. They had to leave their building with nothing – in their nightclothes. Some had to be carried out by the firemen, and they’d lost their walkers and wheelchairs.”
She often works with her clients’ doctors to make sure prescriptions are refilled and medical equipment is replaced, and time is usually of the essence, especially with the elderly. Sometimes she also arranges for transportation, and of course can distribute payment cards for expenses.
Then came the Cameron Peak Fire last year, and Watts deployed (on the ground) assisting evacuees in northern Colorado hotels. “There were many second- and third-time evacuees,” she said, “and they knew the routine.” Other Red Cross volunteers have attested to this recurring scenario, as fire and subsequent flooding events have displaced the same people over and over in northern Colorado.
Watts is genuinely concerned about the healthy continuation of the American Red Cross mission.
“One thing that’s happening is the older Red Cross volunteers are getting even older,” she said. “It’s hard to sustain. They have to get more young people involved, so we can keep it all going.”
But that’s not an easy task, she said.
“Even though they’re young, they work forty hours a week, and when they go home they start a second job: children. There’s soccer, football, and who is going to take care of the kids when they deploy?”
With her age in mind, Watts said she’s been exploring a change of pace.
“My new focus, going forward with the Red Cross, is on teaching preparedness out in the community,” she said. “We get people together by reaching out to organizations, companies, libraries, etc. and give them information they need to prepare for disasters of all types. And I’ve begun taking the classes that will get me prepared to prepare others. I’m learning to become a teacher!
“I’ve found that the clients who’ve come to us prepared, have been much calmer, and had far less anxiety than others. They have their paperwork in order; they have their medications all in one place; and they’re ready when put on alert to evacuate. When disaster does strike, those people know what to do, where to go, and most importantly, they know what the Red cross can do for them.
“It’s been very, very gratifying,” she said. “I think a lot of people don’t know how much work the Red Cross does. It’s important to make communities aware of the work we do – and it’s not only in disaster situations.
“I just enjoy working with all the Red Cross people. They are extremely kind and very helpful. If I don’t know something, they will always help me find the answer.”
Watts attended the Newport (RI) Hospital School of Nursing. She also volunteers as a nurse on Tuesday nights at the House of Neighborly Service in Loveland, helping clients who may not have insurance, and are often homeless. She returns to the east coast each summer; loves to golf, and bikes and swims a lot as well.
And while she’s used to wearing face masks, through most of her career it was indoors in the cooler environs of hospital rooms, operating rooms and ICUs.
“It’s harder, outdoors and in the kind of heat we’ve been having,” she said.
But Barbara Watts’ beaming smile remains the same, whether it can be seen or not, and her desire to help people with physical needs will reveal itself under any circumstance – paid or not.