He was living in New York, but it was what happened in Florida that drew Mitch Kassel to the Red Cross.

In the fall of 2018, the U.S. was having one of its most active hurricane seasons on record. It had started early, with Tropical Storm Alberto making landfall in the Florida Panhandle before the season had even opened. It would produce 15 named storms, including Hurricane Florence, which caused catastrophic flooding in the Carolinas, and Hurricane Michael, which struck the Panhandle as a category 4 storm. 

Kassel, who sold commercial Internet systems and was getting close to retirement, said he watched television news reports as one storm after another hit the U.S. that year, damaging or destroying thousands of homes. He wondered what he could do to assist people who had lost their homes. 

He noticed that the Red Cross always seemed to be helping out in the towns where a storm had passed through and said to himself, “Maybe this is what I should be doing.” So, he volunteered. The Red Cross quickly put him to work as a member of the Disaster Action Team covering the five boroughs of New York. 

With the leadership skills he had learned during six years navigating submarines in the U.S. Navy and his familiarity with computers and the Internet, he adapted quickly to the demands of being on the team, assisting people left homeless by fires. Soon, he became a manager.

In May, when he retired and moved to Fort Lauderdale, he easily transferred those skills to the Red Cross South Florida Region and began responding to house fires there.

Working by laptop from the scene or later, by phone as the threat of COVID-19 grew, he documented how people had been forced out of their homes by fire, gathering the information the Red Cross needed to provide them with temporary housing, meals, toiletries, and clothes. 

“It is probably one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done,” said Kassel. “These people are in desperate shape. You’re the first person they’re going to deal with, and you really can make a difference. That makes it all worthwhile.”  

“Volunteers need to have compassion,” Kassel said, “but they also need to be able to step back. Just have a real need inside to help people because sometimes it’s not very comfortable helping them. If you want to do the Disaster Action Team, you’re going to deal with people in what may be the worst time of their life. You have to have compassion but hold yourself back a little.”

Helping people is both Kassel’s motivation and the source of his satisfaction. “At the end of the day, the feeling you get inside -- ‘I did good, I feel good about myself, I was able to help these people’ -- if you don’t get that feeling, there is no reason to do this job. I’m here to go out and help.”

As he did in New York, Kassel quickly impressed people with his skills and his attitude. Already, in addition to being a responder, he has a similar volunteer position here, coordinator of the Disaster Action Team, said Raymond Boyd, disaster program manager for the Red Cross South Florida Region. 

“He’s basically my right-hand man,” Boyd said. “He helps with volunteers, signs them up for shifts, makes sure they’re signing up for training, provides administrative support for the team. He has that military management experience, which meshes well with the amount of work we give him here. He is an amazing person."

“Just recently Miami had a fire, a multi-family fire, and there were not enough people on shift,” Boyd said. “We just called him and asked, ‘Mitch can you give them a hand?’ He didn’t even hesitate, he just said yes. He dropped what he was doing. That says a lot about a volunteer.”

Kassel found that being a volunteer in Florida is very different from New York. In New York, where many people live in high-rises and other multi-family housing, fires spread quickly from one unit to the next. Sometimes so many people were affected that the city dispatched buses to transport dozens of people to hotel rooms arranged by the Red Cross. 

South Florida cases are much less demanding. Where Kassel might handle victims of as many as five fires in one night in New York, most nights in South Florida he’ll get only one case -- or none.

For the Red Cross, volunteers like Kassel are critical. Ninety percent of the organization’s workforce are volunteers, said Tiffany Page, regional volunteer services officer. “Hurricanes, home fires -- it doesn’t matter if you’re ready or not, they’re coming,” she said. “When we’re not responding, we’re training we’re preparing volunteers to be trained, engaged, and ready to deploy.” 

The organization is conducting its Resolve to Volunteer recruitment campaign through the end of February, reminding people that becoming a Red Cross volunteer may be the way to fulfill a New Year’s resolution. Disaster Health & Mental Health, Disaster Preparedness, Service to the Armed Forces, and especially Disaster Action Team volunteer positions are the main areas of focus.

Volunteers for the Disaster Action Team “are the backbone of our organization,” Page said. “They are the ones who are responding to home fires every single night.” 

The responsibilities of volunteers have changed because of the pandemic. In order to help keep clients and volunteers safe, responders like Kassel rarely report to the scene of a home fire anymore. Instead, they do interviews virtually. Because volunteers no longer drive to the scene in most cases, the change has substantially cut response time, she said.

But that also means that volunteers need to have basic computer skills because so much of the work is done online. Even people who volunteer for jobs that have to be done in-person, such as handing out meals at a hurricane shelter, require training to be done by computer. 

If you’re interested in volunteering for the Red Cross, you can find information at redcross.org/volunteertoday. 

Written by Marjie Lambert