One
year after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her house and school
in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Louisiana, six-year-old
Amya Cornin is beginning to conquer her fears. She still has
to curb her impulse to run all the way “home”.
It has been a rough 12 months for Amya and her family –
and for millions of other evacuees and survivors of hurricanes
Katrina, Rita and Wilma, which devastated the Gulf Coast of
the United States in 2005. Hundreds of thousands of residents
of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida are still
displaced from their pre-storm homes. They are scattered across
all 50 states and struggling to reassemble their lives.
For all of the agencies and organizations trying to respond,
it has been a challenge. The American Red Cross is faced with
the task of responding swiftly, effectively and creatively to
a series of events that created 10 to 20 times more human need
than any disaster in the organization’s 125-year history.
After meeting unprecedented needs for shelter, food, water,
clothing, first aid and emotional care, the Red Cross is focusing
on two priorities: helping survivors and their communities move
toward recovery; and strengthening the organization’s
ability to meet future crises through increased partnerships
and operational capacity.
For Amya, the solution to her problems seemed simple: Run home.
“She really wanted to go back to her old school in New
Orleans,” said Amya’s mother, Renata Jones. Instead,
the little girl is enrolled at Ossun Elementary School in Lafayette,
Louisiana. Her parents have seen a dramatic improvement in her
behaviour and emotional health under the care of a summer extended-learning
programme. It is supported by the Louisiana Family Recovery
Corps and the Red Cross Hurricane Recovery Program (HRP).
Meanwhile, other Red Cross HRP partnerships are helping Amya’s
mother and father – and hundreds of thousands of others
– link to the resources they need to establish jobs, a
home and stability as they reconstruct neighbourhoods or settle
into new communities.
The record-setting Red Cross hurricane response of 2005 has
been made possible by partnerships and flexibility. The organization
mobilized 244,000 staff – 95 per cent of them volunteers
– from 47 states, three US territories and the District
of Columbia. Disaster experts arrived from Red Cross and Red
Crescent National Societies in Spain, the Netherlands, Britain,
Finland, Belgium, France, Norway, Germany, Mexico and Canada,
as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies.
Together, this humanitarian volunteer force provided 1,400 shelters
for more than 100,000 people, served 68 million meals and snacks,
distributed 540,000 relief packages, made almost 597,000 health
and more than 826,000 mental health contacts, helping 1.4 million
families with emergency assistance. Flagships of American industry
stepped forward to support the Red Cross, including Wal-Mart,
which supplied vital logistics support; Anheuser-Busch, which
converted several of its beer breweries to produce 6.7 million
cans of safe drinking water. Microsoft and other technology
companies provided the computing expertise to allow the Red
Cross to expand its network capacity almost overnight, to streamline
the delivery of emergency assistance. The ICRC made its Family
Links web site available, so the relief operation was able to
restore tens of thousands of family connections, severed by
the storms and the chaotic evacuation.
Partnerships in the form of financial support were also essential.
From pennies collected by children to multi-million-dollar donations
from the business and philanthropic communities, the Red Cross
was heartened by the generosity – and trust – of
the American people and of compassionate donors worldwide. Five
months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the Red Cross
announced that donations would cover the projected $US 2.116
billion cost of its hurricane relief and recovery effort.
“The hurricane season of 2005 presented the American Red
Cross with its greatest challenges ever,” said Jack McGuire,
Interim President and CEO.
“Now we are challenging ourselves to ready the organization
and the nation to prevent, prepare for and respond better to
whatever disasters will certainly arise in the future.”
For more information about the Hurricane Katrina Recovery Program,
see www.redcross.org.
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A
disaster worker from the French Red Cross helps prepare
food for distribution in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
(p14556)
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The
Uptown Theatre Program in New Orleans, Louisiana, funded
by the Louisiana Family Recovery Program in partnership
with the American Red Cross Hurricane Recovery Program,
offers stability and hope to those affected by last year's
hurricanes. Children have a choice of music, math, English
and recreational activities, such as this karate class.
Many of the instructors are school teachers who are volunteering
their time to help out during the summer. (p14554)
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The
American Red Cross Hurricane Recovery Program includes
outreach activities to communities where they regularly
gather. Preparedness information has been translated into
several languages including Vietnamese and is here being
offered to the pastor of the Vietnamese Catholic Church
for distribution to his congregation. (p14555)
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An American Red Cross worker entertains two children of
the Everette family while their mother completes paperwork
at a shelter in Birmingham, Alabama. (p14553)
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