By: Darrell Fuller, Red Cross Cascades Region Board Member and Volunteer

With 58 active fires in over a dozen Oregon counties, and over 2.5 million acres torched by August 1 (a dubious state record), the Red Cross has opened nearly twenty shelters since the start of the wildfire season. We still have a long way to go.

Fortunately for Oregonians impacted by evacuation orders, the Red Cross is only a phone call away when local emergency managers need a shelter.

“We start with local volunteers,” says Morgan Schmidt, Red Cross Executive Director for Central and Eastern Oregon. “As the need grows, we can begin requesting disaster responders from other parts of the country. But we always start local.”

Since the first request for a shelter in mid-July, more than 160 Red Cross Disaster Relief Responders have been assigned to help in Oregon. A typical deployment is two weeks.

Of those assigned to Oregon wildfires, more than a third have been local – coming from somewhere inside Oregon. Another dozen deployed from Washington State.

The remaining responders come from 34 different states, including New York, Florida, Georgia, Texas – anywhere and everywhere. The ability to “scale” a disaster response is crucial to the success of how the Red Cross responds to disasters.

In turn, when there is a hurricane, an earthquake, a tornado – trained responders from Oregon travel to where they are needed when disasters overwhelm communities in other states.

The disaster responders volunteer their time, and the cost of their travel is covered by generous donors that range from individuals to airlines and hotel chains. It is neighbors caring for neighbors. But sometimes your neighbors are in another state.

“Wildfires are different than other disasters,” says Schmidt. “The hurricane ends. The tornado ends. The earthquake ends. But Red Cross responds while the wildfire is still evolving, growing, changing.”

Some of the out-of-state volunteers currently assigned to the Prineville, Oregon shelter, include:

• Laurel Marshall from Omaha, Nebraska
• Karl Bethea from North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
• Stephen Edwards from Conway, Arkansas
• Nikki Gettinger from Silver Springs, Maryland (her first deployment)
• William Ayers from Walton, Georgia
• George Durbin, from Huber Heights, Ohio

It’s been an incredibly busy summer so far and many anticipate this pace will continue.  We appreciate people who’ve traveled to support our local workforce so they can get the rest they need in between their deployments.