Disaster Action

The end of last year I signed up, interviewed, and made it onto the Minnesota Red Cross Disaster Action Team. It's funny they make you interview because it feel like they let anyone on that wants to do it. So, after a long delay in finally being able to make it to the orientation training and then an even longer delay in getting my Red Cross badge so I can show up to the scene of a disaster and they don't kick me out, I finally logged on to the Red Cross site and signed up for my four required on-call shifts. I can choose either 6am-6pm or 6pm-6am. Since the former doesn't really fit well into my work schedule, I signed up for four 6pm-6am shifts under the impression from the training that it may take a long time... months... before my first call.

Well, night two of my on-call status... I got the call. Luckily, I was just getting ready to go to the gym, not coming back from the gym or I would have been a sweaty hot mess at the house fire. AND, lucky for me, the call came at 8:45pm, not 3am. My first four or so disaster responses I team up with a fully trained and qualified responder so I know what I'm doing, which of course Tuesday night I didn't.

We had a fireman walk us through the house so we could assess the damage and then it took us over THREE HOURS to assess the damage, talk to the people who lived in the house (5 adults - one of whom was in the hospital due to the fire), process their paper work, and get them on their way to the hotel for the night. It was a mix of emotions responding to the house fire - it was a single girl's dream to be in such close proximity to at least 10 firemen, but it was also sad that they had lost their house, their dog, and were moving into the next few days/weeks/months with relative uncertainty on what was going to happen and what they were going to do. I wish I could do more but maybe what little we did helped in some way.