Little notice, huge duties

A Warren man works at disasters large and small, near and far.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- Tim Settles is ready to leave on short notice to supervise any American Red Cross disaster relief effort in North America.
A packed suitcase sits just inside his office door at the Red Cross Trumbull County Chapter, where he oversees disaster service training and assistance to local house fire victims and recently coordinated $41,000 worth of assistance to 57 Hurricane Katrina evacuees who relocated to the Warren area.
Most recently, Settles was appointed to a two-year term on the Red Cross' 50-member National Critical Response Team, which assesses and ensures safe and prompt assistance after any major disaster. When he's on call as a member of that team, he must be packed and ready to leave for a field assignment on four hours' notice.
"I believe in the organization and I really enjoy what I do," said Settles. "We're doing our part to make a little bit of a difference."
Always ready to go
Settles, 41, who resides in Warren, is always ready to help in any disaster large or small, local or far away. His office shelves are crammed with thick loose-leaf binders containing Red Cross training manuals, disaster plans, policies and procedures, a road atlas, models of historical Red Cross emergency vehicles and a collection of some 1,500 Red Cross disaster service and chapter lapel pins.
Based at the Trumbull chapter house is a national Red Cross-owned emergency response vehicle, which was gone from late August to January to feed Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi.
Although volunteers John and Marian Scott left in that vehicle Aug. 26 to go south three days before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, Settles went north to Michigan, where he was in charge of Red Cross Michigan evacuee operations.
There, he supervised some 250 Red Cross staff and volunteers assisting about 2,000 hurricane refugees who went to Michigan, some of whom had been evacuated by helicopter from rooftops after floodwaters surrounded and invaded their houses.
"My job is to support our workers that are out there providing the services to the clients and to make sure that they've got the tools and the knowledge to do what has to be done," Settles said of his role as disaster operations director.
Unprecedented disaster
"This was the largest disaster we've ever responded to -- 20 times larger than any other disaster," he said of Katrina. "We saw things that we never expected, so now we have got to go back and take what readiness levels we have in place to the next level."
Settles supervised a hurricane refugee center at the Fort Custer Army National Guard Base near Battle Creek. 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. Among the people Settles supervised in Michigan were those providing food, clothing, shelter, nursing, mental health and relocation services to the evacuees.
"Even though there was so much devastation and people lost a lot of stuff, they were still pretty resilient," Settles observed.
His background
A native of Chillicothe, Settles has been with the Red Cross for 18 years, the last seven of them in Warren, where he is director of Red Cross emergency services for Trumbull and Mercer counties and serves on the Trumbull County Emergency Management Agency executive board.
A national Red Cross disaster preparedness instructor, Settles is a veteran of more than 30 disaster service missions, including Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the 1994 Northridge, Calif., earthquake, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2003 northeast Ohio floods, as well as Hurricane Katrina.
Settles was honored twice by Gov. George Voinovich for his disaster response in 1995 at the Oklahoma City bombing and at floods in southern and western Ohio.
The Red Cross couldn't do its job without monetary donations from the public or the efforts of its volunteers, Settles said.
"We are the only nongovernmental agency that is congressionally chartered to be there when a disaster occurs, and so we have an obligation to be there and meet those needs," he said.
milliken@vindy.com