Close to 30 Red Cross volunteers from Oregon and Southwest Washington have shipped out to Louisiana and California to help with the aftermath of flooding in the Gulf states and wind-whipped wildfires in California.
Volunteers from Longview and Vancouver, and from the Oregon cities of Bend, Tigard, Monmouth, Wood Village, Medford, Silverton, Florence, Salem, Portland, Lake Oswego, Wolf Creek, Keizer, Williams, and Turner were working in the two locations.
Longview’s Julie Bishop, who volunteers with the Red Cross’ Vancouver office, was helping manage a shelter for Red Cross volunteers when she arrived in Baton Rouge, La., Tuesday.
More than 2,600 total Red Cross volunteers had been sent to Louisiana, the organization said Friday.
At the flooding’s peak, more than 50 Red Cross and community shelters were set up to lodge the displaced.
“Just driving in here from the airport, you could see the destruction,” Bishop said, saying she had yet to see much outside the shelter. “Everybody’s lives, their whole household, piled in their front yard.”
As of Friday, volunteers had served more than 466,000 meals and snacks and provided more than 55,000 overnight stays, according to Monique Dugaw of the Red Cross Cascades Region.
Bishop said she ends up on a national assignment about every three or four months. She was in Texas this year for flooding and tornadoes, and started with Hurricane Katrina.
The Red Cross called the floods the worst natural disaster to hit the country since Hurricane Sandy in 2012. At least 13 people were reported killed in the flooding.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards estimated flooding damaged more than 100,000 homes across the southern part of the state, and that’s on top of 29,000 homes damaged in a March flood in the north.
The Associated Press reported $127 million in federal aid had been designated for temporary rental assistance, essential home repairs, and flood insurance payments. More than 115,000 people have registered for federal disaster aid, with the state saying $20 million has been distributed to individuals so far.
Battle Ground’s Louise Lipe was set to head to Louisiana for her first-ever national deployment when she was rerouted to the help those displaced by the Blue Cut Fire near San Bernardino, Calif.
The fire grew to 57 square miles and forced more than 82,000 people to evacuate before firefighters brought it under control last week.
By Friday, she was helping at a shelter set up in San Luis Obispo after the Chimney Fire, which had destroyed 49 homes and 21 outbuildings and burned 70 square miles as of Friday.
Lipe, a registered nurse, finished her nursing program in March and, while looking for full-time work, started volunteering with the Red Cross. She started by working with people affected by house fires.
Lipe endured two house fires as a girl, one of whichkilled a friend, she said. She remembered the Red Cross’ helping her in the aftermath, and said she sees the volunteering as both a way to further cope with what happened and give back to the Red Cross.
“I thought I had it all taken care of and I had gotten all over that, but this was really healing, to talk about it,” she said. “I’m volunteering my time, but I feel like they’re helping me.”
In California, where she’s been for about a week, she’s helping those displaced or otherwise affected by the fires with their health care needs: checking blood pressure, finding people medicine or working with primary care providers on people’s chronic care issues.
“Their usual routine is screwed up. And they’re not really thinking about their health care at this time,” she said. One man she was helping out “said I’m never going to get this kind of care again, and it feels like what I did was so simple, so it really meant a lot to hear that.”
