When disasters hit, American Red Cross volunteers are some of many people who step in.
“90 percent of our response is done by our volunteers,” American Red Cross Disaster Relief Lead, Oscar Peterson said.
Coordinating with local emergency mangers from each county, as well as police and fire departments, the American Red Cross provides help where it is needed.
“It's an empathy,” Peterson said. “Your heart really goes out to these people cause they've really lost everything. And they don't know what to do.”
For these volunteers, it’s standard procedure to help.
“We provide case work, health services we provide mental health counseling and we work with the governmental agencies,” Peterson said.
They assess where and how much damage there is through what's called a street sheet.
“We identify individual streets and individual houses and or apartments or mobile homes, whatever it is on the street sheet,” Volunteer Brad Teachman said. “Then we classify them, how many of them are damaged, we have some very specifics about damage for the specific kinds of disasters.”
Lee’s Summit was one of the locations on their agenda on Thursday, helping families like the Neymans, whose basement flooded.
“It's hard to juggle everything right now,” Lauren Neyman said. “We were actually supposed to leave town and so we've had to cancel our summer vacation to handle this.
For volunteer Bob Linebarger, providing items for those that need it, whether big or small is why he does it.
“It's really a good feeling. I mean I like helping people,” Linebarger said. “The small necessities of life, you know help them to kind of maybe say ‘Hey, we can take care of this, we can survive this.’"
The Neyman family says they’re grateful.
“It's huge, very gratifying knowing there's organizations and people out there that are willing to help,” Steve Neyman said. “This morning I woke up and I just kept thinking this really sucks doing it all on my own. The wife, she's gotta watch the three kids, so knowing that there are people out willing to help, it's huge and it really great knowing there's good people out there.”
For more information on the American Red Cross and ways to volunteer, click here.
