Local Red Cross’ Response to Quake Made Handling the Floods a Breeze

The Santa Monica Red Cross’ response to its first major disaster--the Northridge earthquake--prepared the group well for its most recent crisis, the Southland floods.

True, the rains that drenched the area were more like a drill than an emergency: Only one person sought help at a local Red Cross shelter, and it closed down in six hours.

Still, the floods gave Red Cross disaster assistance volunteers, most of whom joined the emergency services unit during the earthquake, a chance to test some of the techniques they had learned during the past year’s formal training.

“I was happy that things were OK . . . so that they didn’t really need our help,” said Tom Viscount, a Red Cross volunteer.

Compared to the earthquake, which forced the local Red Cross to mobilize suddenly, preparing for the flood was a breeze, volunteers agree.

“The shelter was set up right away,” said volunteer Todd Werner, the lead coordinator for the disaster volunteers. “The paperwork was ready to go. People knew what they were supposed to do so they could respond to the disaster. During the earthquake, we survived day to day, hour to hour.”

In addition to weather forecasts, a large, trained troop of Red Cross volunteers made preparing for the flood much easier than coping in the aftermath of the Jan. 17, 1994, earthquake.

Since the temblor, the Red Cross counts about 260 volunteers who donate their time to the relief organization, up from about 100.

At the core of the Red Cross program is a troop of disaster assistance volunteers. Before the earthquake, that group numbered about five. The number of volunteers rose to 40 after the disaster, and the young group--whose members’ average age is 32, has stayed together since.

“It took me only 24 hours to contact enough volunteers to staff up the (flood) shelter for five days,” said Linda Shayne, now a deputy coordinator for disasters. “During the earthquake, we called people to come in and just hoped they would call us back. And I know people’s schedules--who can work nights and who can work days.”

Volunteer Viscount remembers how different things were a year ago, when he coped piecemeal with a shelter full of dazed--and suddenly homeless--Santa Monica residents.

“We had nothing in place for the earthquake,” Viscount recalled. “I’d be shopping daily . . . for food for the shelter--give me anything and I’d take it. And we didn’t have anywhere to keep the supplies. Now we do.”

Since the earthquake, the Red Cross has created a storage area in the basement. There is a gas tank to fuel cars if the service stations are closed. And the main auditorium has been converted to double as either office space or a cooking area, whichever is needed.

Working with quake victims also convinced the Red Cross that more attention should be paid to children in a disaster. A children’s mental health program was established. At the flood shelter in Pacific Palisades, a play area stocked with toys and games has been created for children.

“With every disaster, we’re getting a better idea of how to deal with special populations, like children,” said Dr. Janine Shelby, a child psychologist and a disaster volunteer.

Reaching another “special population,” Santa Monica’s non-English-speaking residents, presents problems the Red Cross has yet to solve.

After the earthquake, “we found a few pockets where we were running into language problems--Farsi and Russian in particular--and we haven’t been able to go out into the community and recruit volunteers from those areas,” said Martharuth Lefever, director of emergency response services.

Still, the Red Cross has plenty of volunteers--enough to create four 10-person emergency response teams. Volunteers wear dark-blue, Oxford-style uniform shirts displaying the Red Cross patch, and many carry electronic pagers.

Led by a coordinator and two deputy coordinators, another team is on 24-hour call, prepared to handle small-scale emergencies such as house fires.

“I was on call the week between Christmas and New Year’s and I got a call at 12:30 in the morning--there was a fire and an elderly woman had nowhere to go,” said response coordinator Shayne. “The Fire Department contacted the Red Cross, and the Red Cross called me. I was able to offer the woman hotel vouchers, food and a change of clothes.”

When a crisis occurs, the teams are designed to work in unison--a coordinator contacts team captains, who call the other team members and, eventually, all 40 volunteers are on alert.

And, unlike last January, all of the volunteers are fully trained.

The training classes at the Red Cross in Santa Monica--in CPR, first aid and other lifesaving methods--are not new, but attendance is up. And last summer, many of the volunteers attended a weeklong Red Cross training session to learn in-depth disaster response techniques.

Volunteer coordinator Werner said he expects the number of Santa Monica disaster volunteers to drop over the next five years, as more time passes since the earthquake that brought the group together. But volunteers say that, for now, they are still bound by the intensity of their experience last January.

“There are a lot of young, single people who are looking for something more meaningful to do with their lives,” Werner said. “Of these 40, none knew each other before, yet there is an unbelievable friendship bond between the people in this group.”