Red Cross volunteers give their all

Photo

Steve Ilko of Boardman stands beside a Chevrolet Blazer that serves as an emergency relief vehicle.

BOARDMAN — An American Red Cross Mahoning Chapter Disaster Action Team is usually at the scene of a fire, right behind the fire department, offering shelter, food, clothing and a sympathetic ear to the often stunned and bewildered victims.

Volunteer members of Mahoning Red Cross Disaster Action Teams, or DATs, answered 92 calls to fires in 2008, and provided free assistance, valued at $34,390, to 292 people in the Mahoning Chapter’s service area of Mahoning County and a small portion of Trumbull County.

The Red Cross is perhaps best-known for responding to large disasters, such as those caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the South, forest fires in the West, or the tornado that ripped through this area in 1985, said Guido Jannetti Jr., director of operations, said.

But the Red Cross also responds to immediate human needs that result from some 70,000 smaller disasters nationally, most of them single- and multi-family house fires, Jannetti said. On average, the Red Cross Mahoning Chapter responds to about 100 local disasters annually, he said.

The volunteers, who are on the front lines at disasters, large and small, come from a variety of backgrounds.

Four of the Mahoning Chapter’s 300 volunteers described their Red Cross jobs and talked about some of their experiences.

Read the full story in Monday’s Vindicator and on vindy.com