The Lamar County Red Cross is one of the last single county Red Crosses in the United States. Executive Director of the American Red Cross in Northeast Texas, John Davis, attributes the unique standing to local support and interest.
The Lamar County Red Cross Chapter was chartered in the early 1920’s. The current Red Cross office is located at 2673 North Main Street in Paris.
The Red Cross provides several services to local, regional, and international residents. The Service to Armed Force relays and verifies communication of family emergencies and developments to active military service members deployed abroad. Holiday Mail for Heroes is a campaign in Lamar County to support emergency communication and supplies for the Red Cross Canteen at Camp Maxey. The program provides holiday cards to military service members that are deployed overseas.
The Be Prepared Paris program provides free scholarships for first aid, CPR, and AED training. The hands-on course is a full two-year certification.
With recent developments in West Africa concerning Ebola, the Red Cross has reached out to play a community education and awareness role. The Red Cross is playing the same role in the United States.
With winter weather approaching, the largest service need is home fire response. Davis comments, “Going into October as these cold fronts show up, there’s a direct correlation with the first cold front of the year and occurrence of home fires.”
Davis stressed the importance of checking the heating elements in the home, pilot lights, wiring, etc. Having not been in use for some time, “unfortunately homes start catching fire,” he said.
About the role the Red Cross plays most often in the winter months, Davis said, “We’re not first responders, but after the first responders have secured a fire, and the family is standing on the curb, if they don’t have next of kin, or resources to get somewhere, the Red Cross works with the family to get them immediately into a hotel, get clothing, food, water, prescriptions, eye glasses, that’s the most common disaster, small single family disasters. Disaster services, is where our greatest need remains.”
The Red Cross has also made some technological advancements in reaching out during times of emergency. The North Texas Social Media Listening Center, based in Dallas, uses a program called Digidoc. It is a system built to monitor all social media, instagram, facebook, twitter, etc., looking for key words that signify emergency. The Digidoc relays the trigger words back to word maps and to geographical maps. Words that signify emergency may include fire, flood, or tornado. Digidoc workers key in on words, digidoc volunteers communicate with those in danger, and a communication is opened up with first responders.
The technological aim of the Red Cross is to move away from paper. Several Red Cross apps are available for free. Whether it’s first aid, flood, fire, tornado, pet first aid, the suite of apps provides warnings as well as communication in the event of an emergency.
Executive Director Davis stressed the importance of preparedness, “Out of preparedness, response, and recovery, 99.9 % is spent in preparedness. The only time a community wraps itself around preparedness is after a big disaster because 99% of the time that’s not going to happen to us. If it does, ‘somebody’ll take care of it’, but when a disaster is on its way, you’re pretty much on your own. First responders start sorting through after the disaster. Red cross spends much of our time in community education and awareness, around preparedness, so now we’ve built a whole suite of digital tools, to support that.”
About general preparedness, he went on to say, “In the worst disasters, first responders are there in three days. If you can stand up on your own for three days, you’re in a good place to make it through the disaster. We have web tools, beredcrossready.org, to development a family emergency management plan. Have some kind of duffle bag or box, with basic supplies to make it a couple of days without electricity. Disaster preparedness is seasonal. Home-fire preparedness is the biggest thing. There will be 1 every two weeks in warmer seasons. There will be 3-4 a week in the colder seasons. The first frost comes and it’s the next day.”
He continued to suggest, “checking smoke detectors, space heaters, candles, stoves, any heating element. Preparedness is a state of mind, thinking ahead. When the disaster comes, then it’s too late. Our job is to be the immediate disaster relief organization. Hopefully within two hours we’re standing in operation after any sort of disaster.”
10% of the Lamar County Red Cross staff is paid staff and the other 90% is unpaid volunteers. Anyone interested in becoming a volunteer can serve in any number of capacities. From organizing the warehouse, to helping with Service to Armed Forces, to becoming a trained volunteer to work directly with families and first responders, the Red Cross is welcoming of anyone interested in volunteering.