CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Many Coastal Bend residents are lending a helping hand to our friends across the Gulf through organizing recovery efforts, donating supplies and money and volunteering their time after the East Coast experiences face back-to-back hurricanes.
The Coastal Bend chapter of the American Red Cross and Corpus Christi Fire Department are just two organizations that have already deployed volunteers. Both organizations expect that even more hands will be needed after Hurricane Milton passes through.
Milton has already shown its strength in meteorological numbers as it continues to be a very powerful hurricane moving in the Gulf of Mexico. But strength is also seen in the number of people working to help their neighbors prior to and following devastating storms.
"We want to be neighborly, it's just neighbors helping neighbors," Coastal Bend Red Cross Executive Director Angelina Garcia said.
Around 2,100 American Red Cross volunteers across the nation have been deployed to the East Coast to help with Helene recovery.
Garcia said there's volunteers trained and ready if our Gulf Coast region were to need it, including areas like Houston and Beaumont.
"From September to present day October, we've recruited 472 general volunteers for the Texas Gulf Coast region."
The Coastal Bend currently has 40 volunteers and to increase that number, Garcia said the organization is offering free training sessions once a week for shelter associates in the month of October.
Along with training, a background check and complete application are also needed prior to deployment. However, after all of this is completed, Garcia said it's a quick turnaround.
"As little as 24 to 48 hours once all of those things are completed," she said. "We are looking to quickly deploy them because as you can imagine, communities are waiting."
The Red Cross is not the only local organization sending help to those affected, the Corpus Christi Fire Department is also sending one of their own to help with relief efforts.
"This team member that's going out currently is going to be a part of the incident management team," CCFD Fire Chief Brandon Wade said. "Which is the overhead and helps direct the resources that are being deployed or coming into the state of Florida to help the citizens there."
Garcia said it's important to remember the help that our community needed after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
"A lot of these communities being impacted have responded to the Texas Gulf Coast, when we've had disasters, as recently as Hurricane Beryl we had folks from all part of the country come and respond and assist us," she said.