Local volunteers headed to southeast after devastating tornadoes

SEATTLE — On Monday, four more volunteers signed up for a deployment to Kentucky to help after devastating tornadoes tore through the southeast this weekend.

Rescues are still tallying the death toll, but at least 70 people died, with hundreds more still unaccounted for.

Red Cross Northwest said they have now sent seven volunteers to help with the recovery effort.

“We’re viewing this as a mass casualty response as well as a mass care event,” said Dan Wirth, executive director of the Red Cross in south Puget Sound.

Wirth, who formerly served as the disaster relief director in Kentucky before moving to the Puget Sound region, said he’ll head to Kentucky from Sea-Tac Airport on Tuesday.

“It’d be easy to say not now, it’s time for somebody else. However, this is close to home,” said Wirth, in an interview on Monday evening.

The Red Cross stressed the first 36-72 hours is vital after a disaster to help shore up local volunteers – many of whom have not slept or sufficiently eaten.

Wirth is among roughly 200 volunteers headed to the region to help relieve the roughly one hundred local volunteers.

As of Sunday night, the Red Cross said there were at least 12 emergency shelters open in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas, providing safe refuge to nearly 300 people.

Wirth said many of the hardest-hit areas had unstable broadband and cell phone service even before the disaster, so he said communication will be a challenge.

The Red Cross said their two biggest needs are donated blood and money.

From the Red Cross NW:

The Red Cross has provided approximately 200 additional blood products to hospitals in response to these tornadoes. We remain in close touch with our hospital partners throughout affected areas and stand ready to provide additional blood products as needed. A great way to help - is to give blood. Even if that is in a few weeks or a month, it’s an ongoing need. Folks can go to redcrossblood.org to sign up for an appointment or call 1-800-RED-CROSS

Right now, financial donations are the quickest and best way to get help to those who need it most – and gives people the flexibility to purchase what they need. You can go to redcross.org to make a donation to disaster relief or text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 gift. For those interested in helping people specifically affected by the recent tornadoes, we ask that they write “Southern and Midwest Tornadoes” in the memo line of a check and mail it with this completed donation form to the address on the form or their local Red Cross chapter.

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