The American Red Cross is in Florida to help with Hurricane Milton recovery. Spokesperson Kim Mailes says the organization's volunteers are providing shelter, food and relief to the storm victims.
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00:00Good morning, sir. It's coming up on now four weeks that you've been on the ground helping
00:06those in need. What's the latest this morning and what continues to be the top priorities for the
00:12Red Cross? I've been here since September 24th. I arrived in Tallahassee in anticipation of
00:20Hurricane Helene and then just 15 days later Hurricane Milton arrived. The priorities to
00:26American Red Cross are of course immediately to provide safety, shelter, all the things people
00:32need at that moment when they're facing disaster. But now as we move into later stages of the
00:37operation, we're continuing to help people not only respond to this disaster, but to help people
00:42recover and to get back on their feet. And so there are about 1,500 American Red Cross volunteers on
00:50the ground here. We are providing food by mobile distribution. We're still sheltering people. There
00:56were about 1,000 people in Florida shelters this morning, 1,000 people in shelters other places
01:02over the six states that we're responding in, and the need continues to go on. We have provided
01:09164,000 overnight stays and 2.3 million meals and snacks since this disaster began over the
01:18southeast United States. We find that people are still in need of help to recover. So we're
01:24distributing emergency supplies. We're helping with shelter resident transitions to get people
01:29back on their feet and out of the shelters, and we're continuing to shelter people who have lost
01:34their homes. And you talk about that need, especially across Florida where Milton had
01:39tornadoes along with storm surge and damaging winds. What is that most critical need, especially
01:45for those that are in states far away that can help? Well, the most critical need, of course, right
01:50now is for shelter, for places for people to stay and live and call home temporarily while they find
01:57their new normal. So we're still sheltering hundreds and hundreds of people across this area.
02:02We're opening up a new shelter today, for instance. But in addition to that, as people recover, get
02:07back to their homes if possible, find new normal, we're providing meals to help them because there
02:12are still thousands of people without power that can't provide for meals, and they lost everything
02:17they had in the refrigerator. So we're feeding, and not only that, we're doing reunification.
02:22We have had 12,000 reunification requests to put families back together that may have become
02:27separated during this disaster. And for those impacted by Hurricane Helene, certainly across
02:35North Carolina, with the cooler air, it is October, there seems to be more need there
02:42for assistance just because so many don't have any heat or any homes, and now temperatures
02:47have lowered quite a bit. That's exactly right. You know, right, we're sheltering, and as we
02:53shelter, we see the numbers begin to drop typically. But because of weather conditions
02:57and the time of year, we're beginning to see those shelter numbers rise again. So we continue to
03:02shelter, but we also continue to help people with food. We also continue to help people with
03:07emergency supplies to begin to recover. We also are helping people with resident transition, trying
03:12to find homes for those, places to stay for people who cannot return to their homes because they were
03:18so badly damaged. And one of the big things we're doing right now is disaster assessment. We have
03:23teams in the field that are trained to go house to house, door to door, neighborhood to neighborhood,
03:28and prepare a database, which homes have been minor damage, which homes were
03:32major damage, which homes were destroyed. And this goes into a database so that we can provide
03:39pointed, targeted assistance for people as they begin to recover.
03:45And for viewers, again, that are states away, cannot physically get to these locations to
03:49help out or join your workforce, how else can you help through the Red Cross?
03:54The best thing they can do is help us with financial support. We have a huge workforce
03:59and a huge demand here for our services. So people can go to redcross.org. They can call
04:061-800-RED-CROSS and help us in that way. Or they can make a one-time quick donation by texting
04:13REDCROSS, one word, to 90999.