Emergency (Page 32)

Fire races through a picturesque valley in southeast B.C. People flee the charging flames, some in just their bathing suits after a swim in the Kettle River. In just a few hours, in August 2015, a raging wildfire forced people from Rock Creek to Westbridge to drop everything, and evacuate.

Elmita Nodeis sits on the ground in the courtyard of Philippe Guerrier school in the town of Les Cayes in Haiti. The school's been turned into an evacuation centre since Hurricane Matthew hit, and she's been sleeping there with eight members of her family ever since.  The 51-year-old has a few buckets in front of her, and she's busy scrubbing clothes. 

The Guay-Bourbonnais family home, in Marieville, Quebec, was completely destroyed by a violent fire. 
“I didn’t want help. I just couldn’t accept that I was a disaster victim,” recalls the mother of the family, Caroline. However, in the midst of the chaos, two Red Cross volunteers approached her and said “This disaster has affected you. It’s okay to let yourself be helped.”

Glass and debris flew through the air as a tornado tore the roof from a section of the home that Arnold Brown rented with a friend in LaSalle, Ontario. Now, more than a month later, the 60-year-old is still trying to put the pieces of his life back together after it was quite literally torn apart.

Sandra is a psychosocial support aid worker with the Canadian Red Cross. When disasters and emergencies strike, the obvious stuff – damaged homes, destroyed infrastructure, injured people – sometimes makes it easy to overlook the damage that’s invisible. We can be impacted by disaster and emergency in many ways and can experience deep trauma that doesn’t simply go away once physical damage is addressed. Recovering from these events requires emotional care just as much as it requires physical care. 

The Round-up offers a weekly sample of what our sister Red Cross Societies are working on around the world. Here is an update on Red Cross response to flooding in the United States, and earthquakes in Italy and Myanmar.

When the time came to evacuate his Abasand home due to the wildfire, Dan Edwards had only a few moments to grab the essentials - luckily, he was prepared with his emergency kit for a moment just like this. 

At the Wood Buffalo Regional Library, Librarian Nicole Greville meets with a group of Fort McMurray residents to practice English conversation over coffee and snacks.
 
It’s been more than two months since the ESL group last met and the room is abuzz with conversation. After all, there’s a lot to catch up on.