American Red Cross in Greater New York

After multiple fires across Long Island, our Disaster Action Team members have worked with local partners to help families celebrate the holidays. Celia Vollmer shares her experience in this blog post.

Cheers to the Service to the Armed Forces team who joined forces with our #LongIsland Board elves to spread some holiday cheer to military families. Our thanks to SilvermanAcampora LLP, Nassau Financial Federal Credit Union and National Grid for helping make holiday wishes come true. Vivian Moy

There are many volunteer opportunities for youth at the Red Cross. Start a Red Cross Club at your school! Learn more here: https://www.redcross.org//gr/volunteer/youth-services.html

Our MNYN Board Elves were out and about yesterday in #Greenwich spreading holiday cheer even the Grinch couldn't thwart! This special Board led project was great way to say THANK YOU to our partners at Greenwich Emergency Medical Service, Greenwich Professional Firefighters, and Greenwich Police. Many thanks to Callalily Studios for capturing all the holiday fun!

Volunteers like Dorothy are helping many Louisianans that are still recovering from Hurricane Delta. Help us by volunteering your time, and make a difference for those affected by natural disasters. redcross.org/volunteertoday

A presentation on how to prepare, respond and recover from local emergencies and large-scale disasters in your community co-hosted by Senator Joe Addabbo, State Senator James Sanders Jr. and Denean Ferguson.

Exciting program coming up this evening with Senator Joe Addabbo and Senator James Sanders Jr. JOIN US LIVE @ 5PM Register here: https://zoom.us//regi/tJMuc...uuqrz8iE9Ov7Z09W5Y2DjTjl8Je-Wdy Prepare, Respond, Recover: What to do When Disaster Strikes This informative presentation will: Cover the main tasks you need to do to prepare, respond and recover from local emergencies and large-scale disasters in your community. Describe the types of disasters you and your family may face, from home fires to hurricanes. Enable you to better prepare, respond and recover when an emergency strikes. Give you the knowledge to sustain yourself, your family, your neighbors and community in the event of a manmade or natural disaster.

Hurricane Laura devastated areas along the Gulf Coast back. Thanks to generous donors we have been able to help thousands of people with shelter, meals, mental health support and relief items. Help aid those who have been affected by Laura’s destruction by donating today. Redcross.org/gnyfb

(3 of 3) We were bandaging cuts, flushing eyes with saline solution and giving oxygen to the fireman until they could be transported to the hospital by the ambulances. It was a full response, but it was what we've been training for. The bad part of it for me personally this was the last week of my senior year in high school and the high school had a tradition of celebrating the seniors with a senior faculty dinner. The faculty would make some remarks about us as a class and ...we would present gifts and thank them for their teaching and for helping us get through high school and I was blowing it off because I was at the fire scene. The next Monday, the head of the school called me into his office and he said ‘I'm very disappointed that you were notably absent at the faculty senior dinner’. I said I have a good excuse, but he didn’t want to hear it. He said I disrespected the faculty, that I had cast dishonor on my class as this was a tradition that has been carried on for many years. Later that afternoon the newspaper came out on that day and on the front page, in the center of the paper, was a picture of me administering oxygen to a fireman who is down at the scene. The next morning, I got summoned back to his office and he issued an apology. Ross Ogden is celebrating 60 years of continuous volunteer service with the American Red Cross (Greenwich, CT) #MyRedCrossLife #RedCrossStory #Volunteer Read more about Ross Ogden’s amazing lifetime of humanitarian service here: https://www.redcross.org//six-decades-of-service-and-count See more

JOIN US LIVE WITH Senator Anna M. Kaplan for the Children's Pillowcase Project! The Pillowcase Project is a free virtual emergency preparedness education class that teaches children (ages 7-12) about emergency preparedness. The project emerged during Hurricane Katrina, when many people who evacuated carried important items to shelters in their pillowcases. Aimed at educating children on specific disasters and empowering them to feel emotionally and physically prepared to deal with emergencies; reinforces personal preparedness by engaging children in a discussion about emergencies, teaching coping skills, and practicing preparedness at school and home.

(2 of 3) We started doing this after school or Saturdays or during the summer. We’d go to various standby events: races, carnivals or whatever else. They’d call up the Red Cross and we’d set up a little first aid tent. This was all pre federal EMS program. So, the ambulance service in town at the time was operated by volunteer fire companies and by the police department. Their training was honestly less than ours. We had better training and equipment than they did. Pretty so...on, the town said can we call on you guys to help us out if we have anything really big because our police and firemen are going to be putting out the fires out and we’d like to have somebody standing by in case somebody needs help. The Red Cross chapter agreed that it would be an appropriate thing for them to do. One night I got a call that there was a fairly significant residential house on fire and could I respond. By that time, we had built first aid kits, splint sets and a bump cap with a Red Cross on it. We even crafted uniforms with first aid and volunteer patches on the sleeves. So I put on my gear and drove to the scene of the fire. When I got there the Chief directed me immediately over to a physician who was the town medical examiner, but he was there providing emergency care; directing it at the scene and he asked me to set up a triage center because there were a number of firemen who were going down as a result of injuries or smoke inhalation from this pretty good size blaze. Ross Ogden is celebrating 60 years of continuous volunteer service with the American Red Cross (Greenwich, CT) #MyRedCrossLife #RedCrossStory #Volunteer Read more about Ross Ogden’s amazing lifetime of humanitarian service here: https://www.redcross.org//six-decades-of-service-and-count See more

(1 of 3) I was a sophomore in high school and one day this guy, Dr. Richard D. O'Leary, showed up at the school. He was a dentist that had just moved here from Bethesda-Chevy Chase. He said, ‘I'm a Red Cross first aid instructor and I'm going to offer a first aid course to high school students in town, would any of you guys be interested?’ So, two or three of us got together and he explained that he was going to draw kids from all the area high schools not just from ours. I ...think the real incentive was just a chance to meet kids from other high schools particularly, to be honest, girls. We signed up for the course and it was really fun. He was a very gifted teacher and we did all of the basic first-aid stuff and then he moved us into advanced first aid. At that point, it was pre mouth-to-mouth, so we were doing Holger Nielsen and Sylvester Back Lift methods of resuscitation and splinting legs using boards. Stuff today that you would roll their eyes at, but that's what first aid was in the early 1960s. This was long before EMS and any of the federal programs came around. When we finished, he said to a group of us, ‘you have all this training so I'm going to form for the local Red Cross chapter what he called a first aid detachment,’ which today we call it like a FASB team, a first aid standby team. ‘We’ll be going to public events and we’ll offer first aid.’ We found that was appealing too and that transitioned us from a training mode into a service mode. Ross Ogden is celebrating 60 years of continuous volunteer service with the American Red Cross (Greenwich, CT) #MyRedCrossLife Read more about Ross Ogden’s amazing lifetime of humanitarian service here: https://www.redcross.org//six-decades-of-service-and-count See more

Reporting in from Louisiana, volunteer Vivian Moy shares pictures from her deployment. Stay safe Viv! Our thanks to you and the nearly 30 other Red Crossers from GNY who are supporting national disaster relief operations right now.

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The past few months have seen historic wildfires & back-to-back hurricanes devastate communities from Oregon to Alabama. Join us on Nov.10 for a conversation about these record-breaking disasters hosted by the Tiffany Circle of Women Leaders GNY Region. Register: www.redcross.org/TiffanyCircleSeries