Red Cross in Florida to assist Hurricane Milton victims

AccuWeather

The American Red Cross is in Florida to help with Hurricane Milton recovery. Spokesperson Kim Mailes says the organization's volunteers are providing shelter, food and relief to the storm victims.

Transcript

00:00Good morning, sir. It's coming up on now four weeks that you've been on the ground helping

00:06those in need. What's the latest this morning and what continues to be the top priorities for the

00:12Red Cross? I've been here since September 24th. I arrived in Tallahassee in anticipation of

00:20Hurricane Helene and then just 15 days later Hurricane Milton arrived. The priorities to

00:26American Red Cross are of course immediately to provide safety, shelter, all the things people

00:32need at that moment when they're facing disaster. But now as we move into later stages of the

00:37operation, we're continuing to help people not only respond to this disaster, but to help people

00:42recover and to get back on their feet. And so there are about 1,500 American Red Cross volunteers on

00:50the ground here. We are providing food by mobile distribution. We're still sheltering people. There

00:56were about 1,000 people in Florida shelters this morning, 1,000 people in shelters other places

01:02over the six states that we're responding in, and the need continues to go on. We have provided

01:09164,000 overnight stays and 2.3 million meals and snacks since this disaster began over the

01:18southeast United States. We find that people are still in need of help to recover. So we're

01:24distributing emergency supplies. We're helping with shelter resident transitions to get people

01:29back on their feet and out of the shelters, and we're continuing to shelter people who have lost

01:34their homes. And you talk about that need, especially across Florida where Milton had

01:39tornadoes along with storm surge and damaging winds. What is that most critical need, especially

01:45for those that are in states far away that can help? Well, the most critical need, of course, right

01:50now is for shelter, for places for people to stay and live and call home temporarily while they find

01:57their new normal. So we're still sheltering hundreds and hundreds of people across this area.

02:02We're opening up a new shelter today, for instance. But in addition to that, as people recover, get

02:07back to their homes if possible, find new normal, we're providing meals to help them because there

02:12are still thousands of people without power that can't provide for meals, and they lost everything

02:17they had in the refrigerator. So we're feeding, and not only that, we're doing reunification.

02:22We have had 12,000 reunification requests to put families back together that may have become

02:27separated during this disaster. And for those impacted by Hurricane Helene, certainly across

02:35North Carolina, with the cooler air, it is October, there seems to be more need there

02:42for assistance just because so many don't have any heat or any homes, and now temperatures

02:47have lowered quite a bit. That's exactly right. You know, right, we're sheltering, and as we

02:53shelter, we see the numbers begin to drop typically. But because of weather conditions

02:57and the time of year, we're beginning to see those shelter numbers rise again. So we continue to

03:02shelter, but we also continue to help people with food. We also continue to help people with

03:07emergency supplies to begin to recover. We also are helping people with resident transition, trying

03:12to find homes for those, places to stay for people who cannot return to their homes because they were

03:18so badly damaged. And one of the big things we're doing right now is disaster assessment. We have

03:23teams in the field that are trained to go house to house, door to door, neighborhood to neighborhood,

03:28and prepare a database, which homes have been minor damage, which homes were

03:32major damage, which homes were destroyed. And this goes into a database so that we can provide

03:39pointed, targeted assistance for people as they begin to recover.

03:45And for viewers, again, that are states away, cannot physically get to these locations to

03:49help out or join your workforce, how else can you help through the Red Cross?

03:54The best thing they can do is help us with financial support. We have a huge workforce

03:59and a huge demand here for our services. So people can go to redcross.org. They can call

04:061-800-RED-CROSS and help us in that way. Or they can make a one-time quick donation by texting

04:13REDCROSS, one word, to 90999.

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