Great Scotts: Area couple stands ready to help again

The volunteers worked 12-hour days, serving 800 meals a day.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- John and Marian Scott of Cortland, who are American Red Cross disaster assistance volunteers, just returned from three weeks at the Hurricane Katrina relief effort on the Gulf Coast, but they're on call to leave again to join the Hurricane Rita relief effort.
"We're ready to go. We're just anxious to get down there and start work," said Marian Scott at a news conference Thursday at the ARC's Trumbull County Chapter. "If they'd call us, we'd go in an hour."
"We raised our hand and said we would go," said her husband, John, a retired GM Lordstown auto worker. "Those people down there, you can't imagine how much they appreciate it. They just want somebody to hear their story. You give them a meal and a hug and just let them vent their feelings."
"Doing this is something we truly enjoy," he said of the couple's volunteer disaster relief efforts.
Left before Katrina
The Scotts left in the Red Cross emergency response vehicle, which is based at the Trumbull Chapter, on Aug. 26, three days before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. They flew home Sunday, leaving the emergency response vehicle behind in Mississippi to serve more hurricane victims.
Spending most of their time in Pascagoula, Miss., the Scotts worked 12-hour days, serving 800 meals a day from the emergency response vehicle to hurricane victims. "We never had enough meals on our ERV. We ran out every time. We had to tell people we'd be back," she said.
"The communications the first week or week and a half were almost nil. The towers were down. We had a hard time getting our supplies in," he said, noting the large geographical area affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Living and working under the same hardship conditions as the hurricane victims in 90-95 degree heat with high humidity, the Scotts slept the first three nights in the emergency vehicle and sometimes had to go three days without showers.
Others from Trumbull
The Scotts, who have been Red Cross volunteers for six years, were among 12 staff and volunteers from the Trumbull Chapter who have left to work in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
Rather than heading south, Tim Settles, the chapter's emergency services director, supervised a center for hurricane refugees, who arrived at the Fort Custer Army National Guard Base, near Battle Creek, Mich.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency chartered commercial planes to fly the refugees to an Air National Guard base next to Fort Custer. At Fort Custer, the refugees were housed in barracks until more permanent accommodations could be found for them.
More than 2,000 hurricane evacuees went to Michigan, some of them evacuated by helicopter from rooftops, said Settles, who was in charge of the Red Cross' Michigan evacuee operations. "They were tired. Stress levels were high, as expected, but they were doing well," he said.
milliken@vindy.com