By Gordon Williams 

When it comes to bringing relief to disaster victims, Red Cross volunteer David Allen of Oak Harbor WA, has done it all — from house fires around the corner to storms a continent away. Most of his responses have been done with his wife Sherrie at his side. “Almost everything we do, we do as a team,” he says. 

Nor is the Red Cross his first act of service. Before he retired from active duty, David spent 20 years in the military — part of it on active duty in posts from Iraq to Afghanistan and part of it with the National Guard in Alaska. His military specialties were transportation and logistics — the art and science of keeping troops well-supplied with food, clothing and equipment. 

That background in logistics was perfect training for his role with the American Red Cross. On deployment, he and Sherrie are most often to be found doing mass care, which involves working in disaster scene shelters, keeping evacuees warm, dry and well-fed. 

The Allens were living near Anchorage, Alaska when David retired from the military. David was not sure where he wanted to live in retirement, but there was one thing he was sure about. “We were tired of the snow,” he says. In search of a milder climate, they moved to Washington. 

David knew he wanted to continue serving others in retirement, so he checked into the Red Cross — first becoming a volunteer in 2015. It was an easy call for them. “My wife and I knew we wanted to work with the Red Cross,” he says. “We couldn't volunteer as long as I was involved with the National Guard. When I retired, we both volunteered.” 

David admits he had only a hazy idea of what the Red Cross did when he joined up. “We knew they helped people during disasters, but we thought that mostly involved handing out coffee and donuts.” He has been involved in enough deployments since then to know exactly what the Red Cross does, which is a whole lot of things that provide aid to victims of fire, flood and storm. 

He and Sherrie both serve on disaster action teams (DAT) in his home Northwest Washington chapter. The chapter is headquartered in Everett and serves five counties in the Northwest corner of the state. It is part of the Red Cross Northwest Region, serving Washington and the five northern counties of Idaho. 

DAT teams deliver Red Cross services to disaster scenes in their backyards. Mostly that involves house fires, but can also include wildfires, landslides, storms and floods. One of Allen's most memorable responses to a nearby disaster was the 2022 Everson flood in Whatcom County, The Nooksack River overflowed its banks and roared down Everson’s Main Street in a wall of water five feet high. The Allens have also responded to flooding from King Tides that swept in from the Pacific. 

If many Red Cross responses have been around the corner, some have been far from home. In one memorable episode, they drove a Red Cross emergency response vehicle (ERV) 3,000 miles from Washington to Hurricane Irma in Florida. “When we were done in Florida, we drove the ERV back 3,000 miles to Washington,” he says. “We had only been home for 10 days when they asked us to drive the ERV to California where they were having wildfires,”  
Before that summer was over, the couple had driven the ERV over 10,000 miles. “That was a great experience,” David says. “I would do it again in a heartbeat.” 

Ryan Mcallister, disaster program manager for the Red Cross Northwest Chapter, says he appreciates how quick David and Sherrie are to respond when called upon. Both have volunteered to deploy to a disaster scene even before they were called on. 

A major Red Cross effort in the fall of 2023 was the response to wildfires that swept the countryside near Spokane. The couple had been deployed to a hurricane that threatened Texas. “But it never arrived,” David says. “We spent three days down there and nothing was happening,” David says. At the same time, the Oregon Road fire near Spokane was getting bigger and bigger. 

“We called up the incident commander of the Oregon Road fire and asked if we could go directly there without going home,” David says. In the end, the Allens spent 10 days at the Oregon Road fire, a blaze that stands out in David’s mind for its sheer ferocity.

“I have been to war twice yet I had never seen the destruction that a wildfire can cause,” he says. “I saw block after block with everything destroyed. I saw homes burned down to their foundations and burned cars with their metal frames melted.” 

Having seen what damage natural disasters cause, and how much relief a Red Cross response can bring, they intend to keep volunteering as long as they can do so. “It's a great way to serve your fellow human,” David says. “We always look at the service we give clients as an extension of our Christian obligation to serve.”