by Rachel Beaird, Communications Volunteer

Canadian officials are calling 2025 the country’s worst wildfire season in over 30 years. The province of Manitoba was one of the most impacted, with an estimated 3.8 million acres burned and more than 12,400 households forced to evacuate by air or ground.

This July, in response to an urgent request for aid by the Canadian Red Cross, the American Red Cross deployed more than 100 workers to support sheltering for thousands evacuated to Winnipeg, Manitoba’s capital and largest city. Three of those workers were from Central Florida – volunteers Amy Poole from Melbourn, Erica Santella from Sorrento and Eloise Major of Winter Park.

Amy worked the midnight shift in the dormitories (sleeping areas). She particularly enjoyed getting to have late-night conversations with the community members in the shelter, learning about their lives and how the fires impacted them.

“Some of them talked to me about how their houses had been destroyed by the fires, and others had families that had stayed behind. Also, some left because of the smoke,” she said. While Amy didn’t see the fires in person, she said that she could smell the smoke from the shelter.

During Erica’s time in Canada, she mainly worked as the first point of contact as people arrived at the shelters, offering coffee and tea and helping displaced community members settle in while completing the intake process. Many of the evacuees were from Indigenous communities where displacement can cause significant distress, so the volunteers worked to make this process as comfortable as possible.

Providing aid during such stressful times also takes a toll on many of the volunteers. “When you’re at the deployment you’re fine. It’s when you get home you really start to think about things,” Erica said.

She shared how she found comfort in talking to other volunteers, Canadian and American alike, during her time in the shelter. “We didn’t talk about work,” she said. Instead, they enjoyed sharing stories, discussing hobbies and getting to know each other.

The American and Canadian Red Cross are two of the 191 Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies that make up the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the world’s largest humanitarian network, and this isn’t the first time the two have worked together during large scale disasters.

In 2016, the American Red Cross stepped in to support relief efforts in Canada when a wildfire in Alberta, Canada, forced more than 88,000 residents of Fort McMurray and surrounding areas to evacuate their homes in search of safety.

Canadian Red Cross responders have also aided American operations during Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Matthew and others.