The American Red Cross is recruiting volunteers for a host of positions across Iowa. Matthew Thieschafer, a volunteer services specialist for the agency, says they have great opportunities for people who want to help others in their hometowns or abroad.

“We are looking for volunteers to fill a wide variety of roles,” Thieschafer says. “Those include people to respond to disasters both large and small. They include tornadoes, floods, home fires.” If disaster response isn’t appealing, the Red Cross could use a hand with its community outreach efforts.

“We install smoke alarms for individuals,” Thieschafer says. “We also have pillow case projects where we work with schools and work on educating students how to be prepared in case of emergency.” Volunteers must be at least 18 years old and commit to one year of service.

“Other roles include those that coordinate behind the scenes,” he says. “We also have individuals who dispatch to report to those house fires. They do that from their home and coordinate those responses. We also have individuals that work with mental health and medical expertise.” The agency’s training is provided at no cost to the volunteers. Learn more at redcross.org.

(Thanks to Karla James)

Red Cross chapters across the state are hosting informational meetings this week for Iowans who want to become volunteers.

Mark Tauscheck, spokesperson for the Iowa Red Cross, says more people are expressing interest in helping the organization in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

“You know, we have people we need to drive emergency response vehicles, logistics, planning, sheltering, feeding, disaster assessment — so, lots of different needs that we have for volunteers,” Tauscheck said.

Informational meetings were held last night in both Cedar Rapids and Sioux City. Two more meetings are scheduled for today at the Northeast Iowa Red Cross Chapter in Dubuque (4-6pm) and the Central Iowa Chapter in Des Moines (6-8 pm). There’s a lot of training involved before a person becomes a Red Cross volunteer.

“First, they have to go through a background check and they have get on board and signed up. Then, they go into the classroom environment – four to five classroom sessions. There’s also some online training they have to complete,” Tauscheck said. While nearly anyone can become a Red Cross volunteer, Tauscheck suggests the best candidates are those who have a willingness to help others and have a lot of flexibility in their schedule.

“People who are working the 9 to 5 jobs and maybe have four kids at home and just do not have the opportunity to get away from their real life to go deploy – those are people who may want to look at different volunteer opportunities within the Red Cross,” Tauscheck said.

There are currently 49 Red Cross volunteers from Iowa who are deployed in Texas helping victims of flooding there, while four more volunteers are in Florida – preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Irma. Find out more about being a Red Cross volunteer on their website.

The Executive Director of the Siouxland Chapter of the Red Cross says the problems caused by Hurricane Harvey have led to what she describes as the biggest nationwide call for volunteers in 15 years.

Tammy Lee says they will send at least two volunteers to Texas and have been calling everyone on their chapter volunteer list to see if they are available to head south. “We’re also getting ready and beginning to work with new volunteers and people who have expressed interest to be able to get them through our training quickly to be able to get them deployed,” Lee says.

Lee says in terms of wide spread devastation and people affected by what is now a tropical storm, Harvey is similar to Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans back in August of 2005. Lee says around 130-thousand storm refugees are needing to be fed and cared for daily and Sioux City will likely deploy its emergency response vehicle to the region soon.

She says it costs around $1,800 to send a volunteer to help with the recovery, along with helping people get back into their home. Lee says you can make a donation to the relief effort at RedCross.org, or by calling 1-800-Red Cross.

She says you can also make a donation or send a check to your local Red Cross office. You can also call the 800 number to check on family and friends within the hurricane zone.

(By Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)

Clean up is underway in some areas of northeast Iowa as others continue to keep an eye on rising floodwaters.

Iowa Red Cross spokesman, Mark Tauscheck, says the city of Sumner was hit the hardest by floodwater as the power was knocked out.

“The backup for their power supply was also affected. So, the whole town was for a couple of days without power,” Tauscheck says. A couple of those days when the power was out were extremely warm, and he says they had 11 Sumner residents staying in the Red Cross emergency shelter through Monday.

“Pretty much the majority of homes in Sumner had some type of damage to their lower levels,” Tauscheck says. “A lot of it was sewer backup, a lot of sump pumps were not working without the electricity. A lot of it was floodwater as well getting in, they just had so much rain.” Tauscheck says many residents couldn’t believe how much rain they got.

“One woman there said she had a five-inch rain gauge and she emptied it twice and it was still raining. At least ten inches was what we heard from Sumner,” according to Tauscheck.

He says the Red Cross has been busy handing out cleanup kits to those hit by the flooding. “Between Sumner and Fredericksburg…we gave out 405 cleanup kits,” Tauscheck says. He says they also gave out numerous cleanup kits to Charles City residents.

Tauscheck says residents are finding more issues as they work to clean up. He says a lot of people are dealing with what is left over after the water goes down as there is a lot you can’t see in the floodwater that needs to be addressed. Tauscheck says anyone who has suffered flood damage and needs help should call the Red Cross.

“Just call their local Red Cross Chapter, that’s the best way to get started,” Tauscheck says. “We are still taking on cases. We don’t have any shelters open right now, but we are still taking on individual homeowner cases as needed. And we still are certainly getting a lot of calls from people who have been affected by the heavy rains.”

A flood warning from the National Weather Service remains in place for eastern Iowa as high water levels on the Wapsipinicon River wash downstream.

More Red Cross volunteers and vehicles from Iowa are bound for the southeast coast of the U.S.

Kara Kelly, a spokesperson for the Red Cross in Iowa, says the volunteers will be providing aid to victims of Hurricane Matthew.

“We have 14 more Iowa Red Cross disaster workers who are heading to either North Carolina, Florida or Georgia,” Kelly said. A pair of Red Cross volunteers from Ankeny left for the region late last week.

The 14 additional Iowa Red Cross disaster workers are from Ames, Burlington, Cedar (in Mahaska County), Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Dubuque, Polk City, Riverside and Waterloo. Some of them are driving emergency response vehicles.

“The Sioux City based emergency response vehicle left on Friday,” Kelly said. “We have a team that is driving the Burlington emergency response vehicle. They left on Sunday. The Waterloo and Des Moines based vehicles will leave bright and early Monday morning.”

Hurricane Matthew has caused severe flooding and is blamed for at least 15 deaths — including at least seven in North Carolina, four in Florida and three in Georgia.

The American Red Cross is preparing to respond as Hurricane Matthew slams into the southeast coast of the country.

Iowa Region Red Cross spokesperson, Kara Kelly, says national officials are checking with the states that are not in the path of the storm to line up help.

“There is a major call for volunteers nationwide to go anywhere from South Carolina to Florida to help, so we are making those opportunities available to folks. But at the same time….we still have a flooding operation happening in north and eastern Iowa and we still want to make sure we take care of folks at home too,” Kelly says. Two Iowa volunteers from Ankeny may be heading out to help with the Hurricane recovery sometime today.

She says they were actually scheduled to head out Thursday, but the airport in Orlando closed and they are not waiting. Kelly says if you are interested in volunteering for the Red Cross the first step is to register.

“I would say now is the time to get signed up, because if it becomes a very significant operation — which we anticipate it could be — we could start sending people pretty quickly. And sometimes that training could happen pretty quickly,” Kelly says. “The best thing to do at this point is to go to Red-Cross-dot-org and sign up to get into the system. At the very minimum you can take some of those on-line trainings and then we will see what happens.” She says it has been a significant amount of time since we’ve seen a hurricane of this magnitude.

“We’re just asking people to be prepared if you’ve got friends or families in those areas. Make sure you contact them, you know where they are going to be, and hopefully they are heeding those warnings to evacuate,” Kelly says.

In Florida alone where some areas could get as much as 10 inches of rain, the Red Cross is prepared to open or support as many as 100 evacuation shelters and has more than 30 emergency response vehicles standing by. In South Carolina, the Red Cross plans to open or support 19 evacuation shelters and dozens of additional shelters are ready to open in Georgia and North Carolina.

The Iowa chapter of the American Red Cross is closing the last of its emergency shelters in Cedar Rapids today.

A spokeswoman for the relief agency says that doesn’t mean its work is done in helping flood victims. Regional communications officer Kara Kelly says the tasks ahead mostly involve clean-up, but the Red Cross will help people fill out the forms they need to draw state and federal assistance.

“It can be a little daunting the amount of paperwork and other things you have to go through, so we try to make that process as simple as possible for people,” Kelly says. Kelly says the Red Cross has licensed mental health care workers available to help people get through the stress of recovery.

“This type of disaster is incredibly stressful. For some of these folks, this is the second time they’ve gone through this. Their homes may have seen considerable damage in 2008,” according to Kelly. The agency reports it provided nearly 700 overnight stays for flood victims since opening the shelters in eastern and northern Iowa September 22nd.

Thanks to Rob Dillard, Iowa Public Radio

More Red Cross volunteers from Iowa are heading to Louisiana to help with the flood recovery.

Iowa Region spokesperson Kara Kelly says 8 volunteers will join 11 Iowans who are already working there.

“Most of them are working in emergency shelters, there are still thousands of people who cannot go home,” Kelly says. “We have a few people who are driving the emergency response vehicles — going into the neighborhoods making sure that people have food and water and clean up items.” The flooding in Louisiana is called the worst natural disaster to hit the United States since Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

“As you can imagine, it’s a huge mess and there’s just a lot of work to be done yet,” Kelly says. She says people who have never experienced the devastation of flooding may have a hard time understanding its impact.

“In Iowa unfortunately we’ve seen a lot of serious flooding first hand, so perhaps we can be a little bit more understanding of it,” according to Kelly. “In Louisiana they are looking at more than 60-thousand homes that have been damaged or destroyed. Which is significant. We are looking at folks who could be out of their homes for months or even years. And that’s really devastating for people.” The new volunteers who are heading to Louisiana are from Alburnett, Ankeny, Manning, Norwalk, Pleasant Hill, Slater and Vinton. Kelly says Iowa also has some “virtual volunteers” who will help out.

“Some of our volunteers who might not be able to be away from home for two weeks have the ability to virtually deploy — which means they have the ability to work with folks who have been displace via the phone or computers,” Kelly explains. The virtual deployment helps the flood survivors and the Red Cross.

“It’s a way that we can maybe cut back on some costs of sending people down there, if they can just work with people on the phone. And it is still somebody to talk to, still somebody to share their story with and help move them closer to recovery,” Kelly says. Kelly says you can help even if you don’t have the time to be a Red Cross volunteer.

“The Red Cross urgently needs the public to help us support the folks in Louisiana and the easiest way to do so is to make a financial donation. Go to RedCross.org, call 1-800-Red Cross or text the word LAFLOODS to 90999 to make a 10 dollar donation. And those donations enable the Red Cross to help respond and to help recover from disasters,” Kelly says.

She says volunteers typically spend two weeks at a disaster site, but can extend that if they wish. They sometimes will spend two weeks, return back to Iowa for a time and then go back to the disaster area.

Around a dozen Iowans are among the more than 500 Red Cross volunteers from around the country who are making their way to Louisiana where thousands of people have been forced out of their homes by flooding.

It’s likely to be the worst natural disaster in the U.S. since Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Kara Kelly is spokesperson for the Red Cross in central Iowa.

“Primarily, the Red Cross workers who are headed down from Iowa right now will be working in emergency shelters, feeding people, driving Emergency Response Vehicles around to neighborhoods that are not under water and getting food to people and perhaps relief supplies,” Kelly said. At least a couple of specialized Red Cross vehicles from Iowa will also be in the Gulf.

“We have two Emergency Response Vehicles, one that is based in Dubuque and one that is normally based in Burlington, that are already on the road to Louisiana,” Kelly said. The federal government has declared a major disaster in Louisiana, where at least 11 people have died in the severe flooding and 30,000 people have been rescued from flooded homes and vehicles.