The NKyTribune is partnering with Horizon Community Funds to focus attention on the area’s nonprofits and the great work they do. This is part of a continuing series.
By Tess Brown
Horizon Community Funds
If a disaster were to hit your family or home, would you be ready? Would you really be ready?
Sometimes you can prepare as much as you can and it just won’t be enough. When the banks of the Ohio River began to rise last week, the only thing many of us could do was watch. It crept up hills, over roads, across parks, and into homes.
As the flood waters recede, many of our neighbors are starting to clean up. It’s much harder for some who don’t have enough money to buy buckets and cleaning supplies. Worse yet, some of our neighbors have been forced out of their homes entirely, relying on community spaces for a safe, temporary spot to stay.
Greater Cincinnati Red Cross is hard at work, adding disaster relief to their daily, “blue sky” duties. In the heart of their Norwood headquarters, there is a palpable energy throughout the Disaster Operations Center as volunteers and staff work to deploy other volunteers, arrange resources and facilitate the logistics involved with getting our neighbors back on their feet.
There is a great strength in their volunteer base, a group of dedicated people who, too, are our neighbors. Some are carefully monitoring the geographic information systems (GIS) map that shows exactly where volunteers are deployed, and what the conditions are in their respective deployment areas. Some are on the phone with pop-up shelters, getting detailed information about number of people sheltered, number of meals served, and so on.
The Red Cross isn’t just at work for major disasters. They are out in our communities every day, helping those displaced from home-based disasters, many of them fires. They also directly serve the military and veterans, connecting them with family and resources. The Greater Cincinnati chapter also houses a youth leadership program, where local high school students create their own programming and host other high school students for a peer-based learning experience.
There is a reason that the Red Cross covers nearly every corner of the globe. It is a critical resource to our community. They have the systems and partnerships in place to move disaster relief forward quickly and effectively. We simply cannot prepare for every potential disaster that might happen in our home or community, but we can rely on our longstanding ally, the Red Cross.
Be sure to keep up with the Greater Cincinnati Red Cross on Facebook or Twitter for updates as they happen.
