Red Cross Has Different Type of Shortage

Even with 275 volunteers in its fledgling Language Bank Program, officials with the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross worry that they may not be able to bridge every communication barrier in an emergency.

The Red Cross only has one person who speaks Khmer, the language of Cambodia, and one who speaks Khmu, one of the languages used by Laotians, according to Susan McClellan, who coordinates the program launched a little more than a year ago.

There are 8,000 people of Cambodian descent in the county, most of them concentrated in the Minnie Street area of Santa Ana. About 4,000 people of Laotian heritage live in scattered areas around the county. These communities emerged in the 1980s as people fled Communist takeovers of their homelands.

The shortage has yet to pose a serious problem during emergencies, but Red Cross officials say they want volunteers in place for when the inevitable does happen in Orange County.

After disasters such as the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes, the Red Cross became “acutely aware that we didn’t have as many volunteers as we could who spoke a variety of languages,” said Judy Iannaccone, spokeswoman with the Orange County chapter. “What we’ve realized since is that that need exists, and exists in a real way in Southern California. We can’t respond if we can’t communicate with the public that we’re serving.”

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The Red Cross also is seeking volunteers who are fluent in Cantonese, Arabic and American Sign Language, though the need for people fluent in these languages is less critical than for Khmer or Khmu.

There are approximately 50 languages spoken in Orange County, where one in three of its 2.2 million residents speaks a language other than English. The language bank has people fluent in 31 languages, McClellan said, with Spanish, Vietnamese and various Chinese dialects fairly well represented among the volunteers, Red Cross officials said.

The Orange County program is one of only two in the state--the other is in Fresno--and one of fewer than a dozen in the nation run by the American Red Cross. The programs still are in the development stages, with most of them formed in the past year.

In essence, the language bank is a list of specially trained volunteers who are called to emergencies to act as interpreters. Most of the volunteers have taken disaster preparedness classes and other training.

The Orange County chapter of the Red Cross received $10,000 to launch its program in October, 1994.

Orange County experiences about 130 emergencies--mostly fires--that the Red Cross responds to every year. “I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess as to the exact percentage of the people who don’t speak English, but we would say that it’s about 25%,” she said. “We have been very fortunate that we have not had a major disaster in Orange County, but we’re preparing for the inevitable.”

Officials hope that, eventually, the program will be accessible to organizations throughout the county and Southern California.

They cite the Cambodian community in Long Beach--the largest in the United States--as an example of an ethnic group that could use the Language Bank Program in times of emergency.

“We’re not that far away from Long Beach, so we could lend assistance if something comes up since our Los Angeles chapter doesn’t have a similar program,” McClellan said. She added: “That is, if we had the volunteers who speak Khmer.”

To recruit speakers of Khmer and Khmu, McClellan has sought the advice of leaders in the communities.

“In our community, many people don’t understand English and therefore cannot follow instructions,” said Khamchong Luangpraseut, who is Laotian and who coordinates the Santa Ana Unified Schools District IndoChinese Program. “We’re talking life or death here in several of these emergencies.”

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Half of the volunteers are college students, recruited from campuses and various companies in the area. In the past year, they have worked with Red Cross officials to translate into various languages a list of instructions given to disaster victims.

“It feels good to know that you can help someone, to be useful in some way,” said Robert Waniss, a former volunteer. Waniss, a 20-year-old Anaheim resident, is fluent in Arabic.

Earlier this year, he was called to Fullerton, where an Egyptian family had lost everything in a fire and did not know where to go for supplies.

“I sent them somewhere cheap--a swap meet--where I knew there were people who could speak Arabic and could help them,” Waniss said. “They were relieved to speak to someone in their own language, and I was glad to help out.”