Emergency (Page 45)

Losing touch with family members is common following disasters or conflicts. Communication lines get broken, families get dispersed and there’s no way of getting in touch. Often, families don’t even know where to start, or if their relatives are even alive.

I’ll admit it. I’m not much of a hiker. If I had to choose, I would pick reading a book on the beach to hiking mountains any day. But I just came back from hiking through the mountains for seven hours in Honduras and even though my legs are sore, I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world.

The cat in question, Sylvester, a black cat who lived in Dauphin’s Towers Hotel, came back from a near-death experience after he rode the front of the hotel’s second storey down to the ground as it collapsed following a recent fire. The fire left several residents without a home, including the cat.

In an effort to help others recover after the floods, teenagers from schools in High River, Calgary, Canmore and Morley are creating short videos detailing their experiences with the disaster. The teenagers' videos are short but say a great deal about the Alberta floods of 2013. They use simple language but express powerful emotions. And this is precisely the point of the arts project funded by the Canadian Red Cross called Youth Creating Disaster Recovery (YCDR).

As natural disasters increase in frequency and severity, so does the need for communities and individuals to be prepared. That's why Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies from around the world have launched the Disaster Resilience Journal project, sharing photos and stories of communities preparing for disasters with resilience in a changing world.

As communications staff at the Canadian Red Cross, we often get the opportunity to meet some of the many amazing individuals who contribute to our humanitarian work worldwide.

By 2015, roughly 375 million people will be affected by climate-related disasters every year, 100 million more than were directly impacted last year.  And this does not count those affected by non-climate-related disasters such as earthquakes, conflicts and man-made disasters which are expected to affect many millions more.
These disasters often lead to separation of loved ones, leaving vulnerable people with no way to get in contact with those they have lost.