The Red Crosser Art of Hurrying up and Waiting in a Pandemic

On March 11, 2020, the world looked remarkably normal for one experiencing a pandemic. in DC when a variety of event and Governor Cuomo had begun the process of discussing the “cluster of Corona Virus (soon changed to Covid-19) cases” in NYC, Biden winning Missouri and NCAA Basketball redefining March Madness for the rest of 2020. My federal office closed down and furloughed me with nearly 40 contractor/colleagues the night before, beginning the self-quarantine process and Red Cross (who I had been on-call with for nearly 2 weeks asked me to go to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in DC. So, while my husband continued working virtually for his organization and managing his project team, off to the EOC I went. 

• Blood Donor Ambassador: The person at a blood drive or donation center who checks in people and helps them fill out the form to donate)  

• Casework Volunteer: The person who provides one-on-one direct support to clients. Some support disaster response while others work with military and their families)   

• Disaster Human Resources Volunteer: The person who helps to strengthen Red Cross disaster staffing capacity. 

As many emergency responders (Red Crossers included) know, the primary skill required lies in the art of “Hurry up and Wait” . Most of us hear the call, race to the assigned location, quickly let leadership know we are on site and ready to go— and wait for an assigned task. The nature of the spread of Covid-19 and the situations it created are for operations/logistics and strategists like me are basically waiting and planning and waiting and tweaking plans and yes, waiting. 

My role during this response to date is Red Cross representative at the EOC to communicate with the various DC groups (Fire, Health, Law Enforcement, Logistics, Leadership) to streamline and expedite the requests for Red Cross people/items and policies to discuss constantly changing priorities each group needs. I have shared this role with two other people for over a month now and all of us spend 89% of our time at the EOC waiting and the other 11% hurrying up and doing. So far, so good. Tasks are being accomplished, requests are being made and addressed and we keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

American Red Crossers are largely hands-on workers in the early stages of any incident response, whether they do damage assessments of property, assisting people in being officially logged and helped, sheltered during incidents that destroy their homes, or connecting them with family members who do not know their condition. The majority of our portfolios consist of natural incidents (hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, forest fires) to human error incidents (transportation crashes, house fires, oil spills, fuel explosions, etc.) So for those who did not have a responder role in the SARS threat in 2003, a pandemic is not the type of incident that an American Red Cross volunteer or employee has typically experienced. Many of the volunteers I know are experiencing varying degrees of anxiety and concern for themselves and their families while simultaneously wondering what they should be doing. So for them I suggest the following options. 

Go back to Volunteer Connection and look into what roles you can do virtually or what trainings you need to do more in the future. The top three I noticed today are:  

All of these are currently out there for volunteers And future volunteers (and yes; they really need people).  Some require training, but those are largely on line and can be found on-line as well.

The Covid-19 pandemic did not stop the nearly 10,000 fires across the US in March, it did not stop the 5.7 earthquake on March 18, 2020 outside of Salt Lake City; not even the hailstorms and tornadoes hit across Northeast Ohio and the Great Lakes region on April 7, 2020.  Red Cross volunteers responded to all of these while taking extra precautions to work around the pandemic. This requires all of us to walk the very fine line (one that is continuously moving ) to continue assisting those in need without putting ourselves or anyone we are helping at risk.

Consider the options and go online to find ways to address the desire to help and the stir-craziness you may be experiencing after over a month in a pandemic. While you do that, I will remain in “wait” mode until the upcoming afternoon meeting scheduled a few minutes from now where I will again have the opportunity to “hurry up”. 

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