I received an email from the Humane Society of the US that the organization has finished moving all of its operations out of Louisiana, and is heading back into more normal operations.
The Red Cross is also moving from shelter operation into financial help for long-term needs, which means that it also is closing and consolidating shelters. Unfortunately, due to the rush to get volunteers into the devestated areas, the organization didn’t perform background checks and a group was caught stealing from the organization. It is now doing background checks on all volunteers, and according to a conversation I had yesterday with a RC worker, these can now take up to a month.
In addition, much of the current urgent call for disaster volunteers was based on a national RC effort to get 40,000 additional volunteers by November 30th–not necessarily for immediate deployment. Some confusion as to the reasons behind some of this. Long story short is that it is unlikely I’ll be helping down south for the Red Cross after all, though I remain an active disaster volunteer. I am assuming that eventually they’ll call us in for training, as that was one aspect of this rush that bothered me a bit — that the St. Louis chapter was waiving the training while other communities were just accelerating theirs.
Of course, as these things go, once I post this I’ll probably get a call.
