CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — As Hurricane Beryl began to show signs it could possibly threaten the Coastal Bend, our local American Red Cross chapter jumped into action by sending volunteers where they would be needed most.
90% of the American Red Cross workforce is made up volunteers. Executive director of the nonprofit’s Coastal Bend chapter, Angie Garcia says the volunteers are truly what make the non-profit's efforts possible.
For Hurricane Beryl the American Red Cross mobilized around 300 volunteers along the Texas coast. Garcia says they were ready for potential landfall from Brownsville all the way up to Houston.
“From our Texas Gulf Coast, all the way from our entire Texas region, and national, we have folks that came in from as far as Florida driving emergency response vehicles to make sure we had enough emergency response vehicles to hand out emergency supplies or do mobile feedings,” Garcia said.
While Beryl's unpredictability left people on the Texas coast in a guessing game, Red Cross stayed ready to serve whoever needed it most.
"It definitely poses challenges, but we have a volunteer workforce that are so resilient and so graceful that they know the nature of what these storms are going to be,” Garcia said. “You know, you just don't know until it actually makes landfall, so we always tell folks to be prepared."
The Red Cross trains and recruits volunteers year-round, but Garcia says they're especially needed during hurricane season.
"We need volunteers year-round. Not just responding to hurricanes and tornadoes in the spring or flooding events. We also responding to home fires, the devastation of home fires, on a daily basis," she said.
All the training is free and when volunteers need to deploy outside of the Coastal Bend, Garcia says that all resources are provided to those volunteers.
If you're interested in volunteering or donating to the local American Red Cross this hurricane season, you can do so here.