Video: 24 Hours with the American Red Cross

24 hours per day, seven days a week, the American Red Cross is there proving comfort, support and humanitarian assistance to those that need it the most.

With your generous support, you help mobilize direct relief and comfort year round, across the country and around the world. You're also a foundation for our readiness work – helping people prevent, prepare for and respond to life's emergencies.

Minisink Valley Lions Club Is Ready, Willing and Able

The Minisink Valley Lions Club (formerly the Greenville/Wawayanda Lions Club) of Orange County, NY, has a long history of community service—from cooking meals for the Orange County Mental Health Association’s annual autism fundraiser, to hand-delivering baskets of food to families in need during the holidays, to providing community members hard hit by the recession with financial assistance for household utilities, medical costs, clothing or food.

So joining the Metro NY Red Cross Ready When the Time Comes (RWTC) program, which provides disaster-relief training to volunteer teams from local community and corporate groups, seemed a natural fit to Lion’s Club members Joan Romanyschyn and Joanne Wilcox.

They were well aware that the Delaware River floods regularly, inundating Orange County communities. After record-setting floods along the Delaware in 2007, Red Cross set up shelters in Port Jervis and Washingtonville, NY, helping scores of affected residents. Joan, Joanne and the Lions Club wanted to be ready before the next flood occurred. “We wanted to become involved with the Red Cross because it provides a direct way for our members to assist others in our community,” said Joan. “If there's a need, we want to learn the skills necessary to fill it. We don't have a lot of money, but we are very hands-on.”

The Lions scheduled their RWTC training for April 2008, and a total of 13 members registered. But before they could even take their scheduled training, the team was placed on standby following the crane collapse that occurred in Manhattan on March 15, 2008. It turned out that the Lions weren’t needed, but if they had been, they would have been happy to travel down to New York City and help.

The team’s first and only response to date occurred in February 2010, when they helped staff a shelter during a fierce snowstorm in the Lower Hudson Valley. As a team, they truly felt a sense of all being in it together. The Lions also found that the beginning-level classes they had taken were helpful. As a result of their training, they felt as though they were providing the services genuinely needed by those who sought assistance at the shelter.

Now that they’ve had some experience, the Lions’ team feels very comfortable with the idea of responding again. In the meantime, they’re looking to strengthening their team through more advanced training. They want to be ready if and when the Red Cross calls!

“Red Cross is an A-plus in my opinion.”

It started as a regular Tuesday for Alexis Geraldino. He attended classes at Technical Career Institutes New York where he is finishing up a program in accounting. But when he returned to his Bronx apartment that evening, he learned that a fire had roared through the building during the afternoon. The fire was out, but the damage was done. The roof and most of the two floors above his were almost completely gone, making Alexis’s 4th floor apartment essentially the top floor of the building. Alexis found that his apartment was nearly destroyed; his belongings ruined with water and smoke damage and his ceiling ripped apart.

“The first night I tried to survive on my own resources,” he said. Although access to the floors above his was blocked, Alexis was able to get into his apartment and stay the night. “I accept that it wasn’t the best idea,” he said. “I was thinking, what am I going to do in the morning?”

Although Red Cross responders had been on the scene during and after the fire to register residents for assistance, Alexis had arrived after they’d gone. The next day, Alex spoke to a Red Cross worker who returned to the building. He later came to Metro Red Cross headquarters, where, caseworkers arranged for a hotel for him for two nights, and referrals for longer-term city housing. Alexis said, “I knew the Red Cross would come through. Red Cross is an A-plus in my opinion and not just because of the help I just got.”

As it turns out, Alexis had received Red Cross help years earlier. In 2003, while serving in the army in Tennessee, waiting to be deployed to the Iraq, Alexis’ father, who was his only living relative, had a heart attack back in New York. With the assistance of the Red Cross’s Service to the Armed Forces program, Alexis was able to return to oversee his father’s care. Sadly, before his father could receive the surgery he needed, he passed away.

After his father’s death, Alexis spent a year in Iraq, where he injured his back. Though he originally intended a life-long career in the service, Alexis was discharged for medical reasons. He returned to New York City in 2007.

Alexis is incredibly grateful for all the assistance he received both after the fire and when he was in the military. He said, “I cannot talk about the Red Cross without saying ‘Thank-you.’ I mean it.”

Alexis Geraldino, Bronx, New York

Red Cross helps Holocaust Survivor recover piece of family history

L to R, bottom row: Mania Kichell’s daughter, Ruth Langroth and Holocaust survivor Mania Kichell. Top row: two of Mania’s granddaughters, Simone Vogel and Stacey Langroth; and daughter Anna Zvi.

On www.nyredcross.org, we published a Holocaust tracing story on how we helped Queens resident, Anna Zvi, recover a piece of her mother's family history:

Since as long as she can remember, Hollis Hills, Queens resident and mother of two Anna Zvi has known that she was the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Although her mother, Mania Kichell, now 90 years old, rarely spoke of these traumatic years of her life, Anna still knew a bit about what she endured during WWII.

Hearing about what her mother went through was heart-breaking.

Anna knew about the brutality her mother had suffered when the Nazis lined up her family and divided them for transport to different camps in 1944. “When they were saying ‘Left’ and ‘Right,’ my mother’s mother, one of her sisters, and her sister’s child were sent to one side and she to the other side,” Anna said. “My mom later learned they were sent to a death camp. But at the time, she tried to run after themand was severely beaten.”

The rest of the story involves how the Red Cross was able to help retrieve public documents about her mother.

About three years ago, triggered by her mother’s age and further deteriorating mental condition, Anna began a search to discover as many of the lost pieces of Mania’s story as possible. She started by contacting Yad Vashem and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which sent Anna documents pertaining to Mania’s time in Auschwitz. Additionally, the Holocaust Memorial Museum recommended that Anna contact the Red Cross. She contacted the Greater New York chapter, and within two months of initiating a case, Anna began to receive the first documents from them—public records obtained by the Polish Red Cross confirming her mother’s residence in the Lodz Ghetto and liberation from Bergen-Belsen. 

Read the whole story here.

“There is still compassion in this city.”

After a May 29 fire destroyed his Brooklyn apartment, Michael Memeh discovered an unanticipated source of caring and kindness in his community. “Both the fire department and the Red Cross showed a marvelous kind of compassion that I have never experienced in New York,” Memeh said. “They were there to say, ‘This is not the end of the world. There is still hope….’”

Memeh said he stepped out for a meal that Sunday—and upon returning home from the restaurant, found smoke pouring from his third-floor apartment. He ran through the building alerting neighbors, who managed to evacuate by the time the fire department arrived on the scene. As firefighters controlled the blaze, Red Cross responders offered residents food, water, hygiene kits with essentials like toothbrushes, toothpaste and soap, and arranged for temporary housing.

A few weeks later, investigators hadn’t yet determined the cause of the fire on Dean St., but there is little doubt about the effects. “When I left my apartment to go to the restaurant, there was no television or radio on; everything was in order,” said Memeh. “By the time I came back, everything had burnt down. There was nothing left.”

The episode was just one of more than 300 fires and other emergencies the Greater NY Red Cross has responded to in Brooklyn over the first half of 2011; this year the organization has offered food, shelter and emotional support to more than 2,000 people in the borough.

Memeh has transitioned to a longer-term Brooklyn shelter provided by the city, says he looks forward to returning to his job as security guard, and continues to have kind words for the Red Cross. “The team from the Red Cross was able to pat me on the back as if my mother was there for me,” he said. “There is still compassion in this city. I will never forget that.”

Michael Memeh, Brooklyn, NY

“They genuinely want to help people.”

Tom Sanchez and his girlfriend had just finished dinner in their Astoria, Queens, apartment and were sitting down to watch TV when they smelled smoke. Upon finding it pouring out of their kitchen cabinets and sink, Tom’s girlfriend grabbed their pet cat and Chihuahua and ran down six flights of stairs to the street. Tom, seeing people standing in front of the apartment immediately below theirs and hearing that someone was still inside, decided to go in and help.

Inside, parts of the apartment were in flames, and he was forced to crouch lower and lower beneath the smoke as he waded through a foot of hoarded materials to cross the room. He found the occupant of the apartment, a woman who was reluctant to leave. Tom had trouble communicating with her because she spoke only Spanish; he finally was able to pull her outside to safety.

Once the fire was out, Tom and his girlfriend returned to their apartment to find most of their kitchen destroyed, with a hole knocked through the ceiling and all the appliances ripped from the walls. Although the apartment was not habitable, they were fortunate in that most of their personal possessions, which were in other rooms, were spared.

The Red Cross arrived and offered assistance. Tom and his girlfriend initially declined, thinking they had other places to stay. Soon after the Red Cross relief workers left, however, they decided they didn’t wish to inconvenience family, friends or neighbors, and called the number on the flyer the Red Cross had given them. They were immediately provided with short-term housing at a local hotel. The next day, a caseworker at Red Cross headquarters advised them on how to work with a city agency to arrange longer-term temporary housing.

Tom said he felt lucky to have survived the fire since there were no smoke detectors in the building. He believes if it had started after they’d gone to sleep, they might not have awoken in time to escape.

Before the fire, Tom thought Red Cross provided assistance only to people affected by international disasters. He was surprised that Red Cross responders arrived at his building within minutes and that they were so supportive. “They genuinely want to help people," Tom said. "They weren’t trying to put a stamp on a piece of paper and move on to the next client. That was so unexpected and refreshing.”

Tom Sanchez, Queens, NY

A New Yorker in Joplin

Immediately after a deadly tornado hit the city of Joplin, Missouri on May 22, destroying thousands of homes, killing more than 150 people, and throwing thousands of lives into disarray, the Red Cross in Missouri rushed to help. It housed, fed and provided comfort and caring to hundreds of residents, gave out tarps, gloves, rakes and dust masks, and distributed comfort kits containing essentials such as shampoo and toothpaste. Additionally, Red Cross vehicles drove through Joplin neighborhoods, providing residents with water, snacks and much needed emotional support.

The Greater New York region also sprang into action, deploying 12 workers to assist in the Joplin relief operation. James Bethea, a Greater NY Disaster Mental Health volunteer, was one of those dispatched to the disaster area. As his deployment was ending, the New York native checked in from Joplin to talk about his time there.



Greater NY volunteer James Bethea and friends

 What is your role in Joplin?

I got here four days after the tornado struck. I was assigned to a shelter where about 400 people—children and families—were staying. As far as the mental health work I’m doing, I’ve been talking to about 20 people a day. I’m part of an integrated care team that reaches out to family members who lost loved ones in the tornado. That’s obviously quite intense.

Was the situation on the ground what you excepted?

In our training, we’re taught to deal with trauma and crisis, but nothing really prepares you for these types of events. When I first arrived, I was overwhelmed by the destruction I saw and by hearing the gut-wrenching stories from the victims. It took me a while to really compose myself.

How does this role compare to your volunteer work in the New York area?

It’s different in the sense of scale. The tornado was about a mile wide and six miles long. The hospital, Home Depot and Wal-Mart were all destroyed. This was a city-wide disaster, as opposed to the smaller-scale traumatic events I‘ve responded to in New York.

What is the general mood?

The general feeling is shock, that this was a surreal experience. A lot of people are angry because they lost everything. For some people, the only thing they could salvage before the storm hit was a bag of clothes or some small valuables. But I am also seeing incredible resolve among the people—especially people who are out in the community. Neighbors are helping neighbors and people are moving forward. When people realize I am from New York, they’re really thankful, appreciative and humble that people have come from Red Cross chapters all over the country to help. But I feel like this community has helped me just as much. To see people bond together like that, support and comfort each other like that, it’s inspiring. I’m deeply humbled to be a part of it. It’s been an amazing experience.