Snohomish County Red Cross volunteers help out in Ike’s wake

Published 10:56 pm Thursday, September 18, 2008

EVERETT — Some of the thousands of people displaced from their homes by Hurricane Ike are getting help from Snohomish County Red Cross volunteers.

More than 40 volunteers from the Everett-based chapter are in Texas and Louisiana, part of the team of thousands of volunteers feeding and caring for storm refugees.

“They’re amazed that we come from this far away to help them,” Corinne Lee of Bothell said by phone. “It’s a bewilderment to them.”

Lee is working at an emergency shelter in Tyler, Texas, north of Houston. She’s helping a group of people from ­Beaumont, Texas, who have been unable to return home.

Ike, a Category 2 hurricane, slammed into the Gulf states Saturday causing widespread power outages and destroying homes.

The storm swept from Texas north through the Midwest and is blamed for 56 deaths in 11 states, according to the Associated Press.

On Thursday, 2 million homes remained without power.

“It is a very large, very lengthy relief operation that will probably require Red Cross involvement through the holiday season,” said Chuck Morrison, the Snohomish County Red Cross executive director.

The local chapter has more than 400 trained disaster relief volunteers. Many likely will be sent to the gulf region for a few weeks and then rotated back home to recharge.

That still leaves plenty of volunteers in Snohomish County to help with fires, floods or other local disasters, Morrison said.

Since Ike made landfall, the Red Cross has hosted more than 322,400 overnight stays at emergency shelters and served more than 1.8 million meals.

“That is a lot of plates of spaghetti,” Morrison said.

Retired Edmonds School District teacher Kathy Hoff of Lynnwood has been from Texas to Florida and back during the past three weeks.

She arrived in the region to help prepare for Hurricane Gustav. Then she went to Florida to help prepare for Hanna, and finally back to Texas as Ike barrelled through the Gulf of Mexico.

Most of the time, she’s been serving hot meals out of a truck, she said.

“It gives you a good feeling to be able to help these people,” Hoff said. “You know that they would help us if we were in a crisis.”

Now, Red Cross officials are concerned that political and economic news may be distracting people from hearing about the dire need for help in Ike’s wake.

“I would hope that folks would reach deep into their pocketbooks to make a donation,” Morrison said.

The relief organization urgently needs financial support, officials said.

Working in Texas, Lee said she’s been sleeping on a cot in a room with hundreds of other volunteers.

The work is hard and the conditions difficult, she said. But the rewards are worth it.

“People are so thankful when they see the Red Cross,” she said. “It’s really important to be able to come out and help these people when they need it.”

Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@heraldnet.com.