Disaster Response (Page 22)

Over the weekend of May 12, the Kettle River in Grand Forks, B.C. flooded into the downtown region forcing several low-lying areas to evacuate. The Canadian Red Cross is helping meet the urgent needs of flood-impacted residents in Grand Forks and the rest of the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary. We encourage evacuated residents to register with Emergency Social Services or the Red Cross. 

As flood waters begin to recede in communities along the St. John River in New Brunswick, residents are turning their attention to cleaning up and recovering from the disaster. The Canadian Red Cross is offering financial assistance in the form of an electronic funds transfer of $300 per household to assist residents returning home after the evacuation. 

There is substantial flooding along the St. John River and other waterways in New Brunswick, significantly impacting Fredericton, Saint John and other communities. As flood waters continue to rise, residents are evacuating. The Canadian Red Cross is on the ground, supporting affected individuals and families. 

Nearly one year ago, my colleague Martin De Vries described the first rains of 2017 to fall on the desperately drought-affected district of Kindo Koysha in southern Ethiopia. The occasion was joyous but all too short-lived. As Martin concluded then: “Has the drought ended? Not by a long way.” I arrived in Ethiopia three months later to find incredibly resilient people coping with varying degrees of recurrent drought in their regular ways; ways unfathomable to most of us in Canada.

Two members of the Simon Fraser University (SFU) Red Cross Club are showing other young people how to turn their passion into action. Students Jessilyn Wong and Daniel Jin volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross Disaster Management logistics team, arranging vehicles, supplying technology, and taking inventory of supplies that helped the Red Cross assist thousands of people forced from their homes by last summer’s B.C. wildfires. 

Hello from Halifax! Thirteen years ago, I looked into volunteering somewhere where I could help people and make a difference in my community. I decided to check out a Canadian Red Cross volunteer orientation session and after reviewing the various positions, applied to become a member of the emergency response team.

For Andrew DeGruchy, volunteering is a part of his life. The 30-year-old has been a volunteer firefighter and Lieutenant with Cold Lake Fire-Rescue for eight years. When evacuees from the La Ronge, Saskatchewan area were sheltered in Cold Lake, he got a first-hand look at the work Canadian Red Cross volunteers do; and that prompted him to become part of the disaster management team.

Where in the world did people receive help from the Movement in 2016? A new report published by IFRC can tell you exactly where. The report gathers data from 190 National Societies worldwide, and offers insights into humanitarian and societal trends such as spontaneous volunteering; how volunteer numbers rise and then stabilize following a major disaster, and how indicators are affected by sociodemographic factors such as population size and the Human Development Index.