Know Your Risk, Ready Your Community and Respond with the Red Cross

As a community, we must confront our greatest risks, care for our most vulnerable and minimize the impact of disasters. As the American Red Cross, we are placing our resources where we face the greatest threats.

Across the country, American Red Cross chapters work every day to prepare communities to respond to disasters. By training volunteers; acquiring cots, blankets, vehicles and feeding supplies; and securing funding from individuals, businesses and foundations we work to ensure the resources needed to respond to well-known and regular threats, such as house and apartment fires, are available.

While each local chapter has worked for years to build each of their capacities, particular risks are so large and vulnerabilities so great that they require a different, more strategic approach. These disasters are the type that cripple a community’s infrastructure and forever change the way of life.

The things we need most won’t be available – utilities will be down, food and water scarce, fuel and transportation in short supply, communications limited, hospitals overwhelmed and relief agencies taxed. Homes will be destroyed and families separated.

Concerned about the worst, but knowing the public expects our best, the American Red Cross recognizes we must approach our planning and preparedness in a new way. We want to be Ready for the Worst. By preparing for the large events we will be even more effective at responding to disasters day to day.

Going forward, the American Red Cross plans to focus our preparedness activities to achieve:

• Organizational Readiness –volunteer recruitment, training, support and retention; material resource acquisition, placement and maintenance; the identification and creation of community partnerships for preparedness training as well as sheltering and feeding operations; the development of multi-lingual and multi-cultural capabilities; the creation, equipping and operation of chapter Emergency Operations Centers; and the development of systems and plans for preparing for, and responding to, catastrophic events.
• Individual Preparedness – public awareness campaigns to increase understanding of the need to be prepared and community education and training to increase knowledge of life-saving skills and survival tactics; and, in cases where funds can be raised, grants to communities and/or organizations to purchase needed supplies (disaster kits, etc) for those who cannot afford to do so otherwise.
• Community Partner Collaboration - Recognizing that no one agency can do this all alone, the Red Cross must seek the help and support of government agencies, other humanitarian and non-profit partners, and corporations in order to succeed in building the overall capacity that is needed together.
• Sustainability – Ensuring that programs and strategies that enhance individual citizen preparedness and community readiness can be supported long-term through increased chapter capacity is an essential focus moving forward so that gains made through programs implemented today do not become the victim of languishing resources in the future

At the same time, however, the Red Cross is far from the only agency that plays a role in this process. Together, the entire community must identify ways to strengthen its resiliency and response to our worst-case scenario disaster.