Red Cross Executives Admit Need for Cultural Shift
The American Red Cross is in need of a cultural shift, according to two top officials at the organization.
Jack McGuire, interim CEO of the American Red Cross, and Ross Ogden, a member of the Board of Governors for the Red Cross, say investigations into the organization's handling of Hurricane Katrina reveal that the group needs to turn away from a self-centered view of relief work.
Wildfire Response Redemptive for Red Cross
The American Red Cross was widely criticized for its poor response to victims of Hurricane Katrina. But it's been a different story in Southern California, where supplies and assistance arrived in abundance early on.
The Red Cross has a charter from Congress to provide relief to disaster victims. Poor communication and bureaucratic issues highlighted by its Katrina response were targeted in a major re-organization that is still under way.
Now, the wildfires are its first big test post-Katrina.
By Monday evening — the first day of the fire evacuation — the Red Cross had five shelters open in the San Diego area. Eventually, it had opened 14 shelters. But those didn't include the area's largest shelter — Qualcomm Stadium, which housed 10,000 evacuees.
That was opened by the city of Chula Vista, south of San Diego, which had to set up its own shelter.
"When the city called for assistance to other agencies that would normally be able to provide assistance, that assistance was not available," Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox said.
Vincent Mudd, the chairman of the San Diego and Imperial County Red Cross, told NPR member station KPBS noted the scope of the evacuation order.
"No one anticipated that this would be something that evacuated over 650,000 Californians," Mudd said.
"In the first day and the second day, we ... were beyond the limit of what we could all do, and we still had to do more," he added.
The local chapter had just 2,000 cots on hand for people to sleep on. But that's where the post-Katrina reorganization plan kicked in.
There are now regional Red Cross supply centers instead of a central location. Within 48 hours, 10,000 additional cots were trucked from the regional warehouse in Reno.
Also, the Red Cross used to be pretty possessive of its supplies. When other agencies asked to share, they were turned down. This time, the Red Cross gave 1,000 cots and 10,000 blankets to the Qualcomm shelter.
Red Cross Plans to Expand Disaster Preparedness
Most of the initiative will be completed or under way by July 1, according to Joseph C. Becker, Senior Vice President for Preparedness and Response. Among the goals of the initiative:
Stockpiling of Supplies
- Increasing the stockpile of supplies (food, cots, blankets, comfort kits, etc.) in key risk states, which will enable the Red Cross to serve one million meals and shelter 500,000 people per day in the initial days after a disaster strikes. This represents an additional investment of about $80 million for supplies and nearly tripling of warehouse space around the country.
- Prestocking one million debit cards for families displaced by catastrophic events.
- Pre-positioning communications equipment such as satellite phones, cell phones and radios in 21 cities in nine coastal states.
Strengthening Infrastructure
- Upgrading the Red Cross’s IT infrastructure to allow it to speed financial assistance to one million affected families within a ten-day period and two million over a longer term. (During Katrina, that system strained after it exceeded 100,000 cases. However, the Red Cross was able to serve more than 1.2 million families across the Gulf Coast through a variety of means.)
- Creating, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a nationwide database that will help officials track the location of shelters, as well as the number of people in them, during a major disaster.
- Dedicating Red Cross staff to coordinate with state emergency management agencies in 13 high-risk areas.