Q & A -- Being there in times of need

You see them at every major local, national or international disaster

scene. Right now, people wearing white shirts with the red emblem of the

American Red Cross are at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and at the

Pennslyvania crash site, helping the victims, their families and their

friends.

Among the around 4,000 volunteers at the group’s Orange County chapter

-- 1,000 of which are youth -- is nurse Rebecca Israel of Costa Mesa.

Israel is the acting function lead for Disaster Health Services in Orange

County. She said the woman who normally occupies this position is in New

York at the Twin Towers site.

Israel, along with Red Cross spokeswoman Rebecca Long, talked with

Features Editor Jennifer K Mahal about the role of the Red Cross in a

community and what people can do to help -- namelygive time, give blood

and give money.

How did you first get involved with the Red Cross?

I first got involved when I was working for the hospital [Coastal

Communities Hospital in Santa Ana] and the Red Cross approached out

business development officer and was looking for anyone to volunteer. And

I got involved that way and sort of got hooked ever since.

Tell me about some of the disasters that you have worked the site

of. What is it like to go and do that?

It’s interesting because when you first arrive, it depends on what

point of the disaster you’re coming in on. If it’s the beginning it can

be a little chaotic, in which case I think nurses do very well in

situations like that, especially RNs [registered nurses] in critical care

and ER. We’re used to what looks like to you to be chaos, and we’re very

good sorting things out and figuring out, OK, this need to go here and

there, and there might be victims wandering.

The firefighters are so busy taking care of the fire, the police are

doing what they do. The paramedics, of course, have taken off the hurt

and the injured. But a lot of times the victims, families are not -- I

don’t want to say forgotten -- but they just kind of are standing off to

the side and they really do need somebody to come by. Especially if it’s

a large fire involving multiple apartment units. They need someone to

come and sort of organize them, put them in a safe area, keep them warm.

We have some great mass care workers here with the Red Cross that I’ve

worked with that ... we truly just work great together to take care of

those kinds of folks.

I’ve also worked most often for what we call single family fires. And

we respond -- our Red Cross investigators will go out first and figure

out -- and if they have nursing needs, medical needs, we replace their

medications, their glasses if it was destroyed in a fire, their medical

machinery, or anything like that. If they’re unable to pay for that

themselves, then we look at helping them out with replacing that.

Very often, as you can imagine, there’s emotional trauma that can

spill over into medical problems right there and then. People who have

diabetes or hypertension will go right out of control right in front of

you. So, we’re very often needed there.

As far as large disasters that I’ve served on, I was at Seattle. I was

sent to Seattle to help out in the earthquake. I was sent to Alaska

Airlines two or three years ago [the plane crashed off Port Hueneme in

January 2000 with 88 people aboard]. I spent a week up in Los Angeles and

I took care of the families there as they were brought from all areas of

the country and assembled at the hotels there. We were tasked with taking

care of those folks.

In those kinds of situations, we work extremely closely with our

Disaster Mental Health. There’s a fine line between an anxiety reaction

and a little chest pain. And so, they’ll bring the folks over to me to

say “Is this really chest pain, or is this just anxiety.” So, we work

very closely in those circumstances.

I’ve also worked -- we had the Lemon Heights fire here a couple years

ago, the Laguna fires, the Laguna floods ... poor Laguna!

What I’m most experiencing right now, and if there’s a silver lining

to this terrible tragedy [on Sept. 11] is that we are inundated with

nurses and in some cases doctors. I am amazed at the doctors that want to

come and volunteer. But nurses and EMTs and paramedics and respiratory

therapists, which we don’t get too many breathing treatments here, but I

admire their courage for volunteering.

I am so inundated right now, it’s been a long time since I’ve had to

volunteer here at my own chapter instead of out in the field. It’s like

our own little mini-disaster, if you will, because we’re almost at a

disaster type of operation trying to incorporate all of these new

wonderful volunteers. I’m so excited. We so desperately need nurses to

help with those every day, single family fires and different events that

happen in our community.

We get stretched pretty thin. There’s only a handful of us nurses

that, for the last couple of years, have been taking care of those folks.

And we’re very, very grateful for the outpouring.

What is the role of the Red Cross in a community?

We have many delicious roles that we do. We first of all respond to

the community in a time of need, in disaster. Natural disasters, man-made

disasters ... fires, we respond to any large events like that.

In addition, we also will help rehabilitate the community. After a

disaster, we will come in and assist them with their immediate needs, but

help the community leaders figure out their long-term needs and help them

with preparedness, so that the next time we want to mitigate the damage.

We want to prevent some of the damage, so we do a tremendous amount of

teaching.

We have areas in which, we have folks here at the Red Cross that will

work with the community leaders to prevent and mitigate further damage in

the future. The Red Cross is also tasked with -- teaching CPR classes and

first aid and workplace types of issues too. Umm...what else?

Rebecca Long: I would say basic needs like your food and your shelter.

Your mental health professionals.

Israel: Very strong mental health. And in fact right now our mental

health workers are dealing with what we’re responding to right now, for

instance with the tragedies that are going on right now. We have a mental

health hotline where folks have been calling in. We have psychologists

and trained folks that are dealing with the community itself. There are

actually people that are not necessarily relatives of those folks back in

New York, but actually are just so deeply affected by what is going on.

And something about the Red Cross is very comforting to people and they

look to us.

I just had to report my cell phone was just stolen. And I spent a few

minutes on the phone, just as Rebecca came to get me, and the lady that I

was talking to -- I mean, this is somebody probably in Oklahoma at a call

center or something -- and I don’t know how it came up, but she

mentioned, “Where did you lose it?” and I said well “I work here at the

Red Cross and I think I lost ...” and my gosh, she started crying and she

said “Thank you so much for all you do.” I’m just so amazed, so amazed,

at how people respect and gain comfort and feel so secure knowing the Red

Cross is out there doing their job.

What can people in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach do to support the

Red Cross?

In many, many different ways actually. The obvious one would, of

course, be donations. Orange County is very large and diverse in

population. And we have very specific needs in Newport Beach and Costa

Mesa. The Red Cross in Orange County has -- I believe it’s a five year

goal -- and our goal is to shelter and take care of 100,000 victims.

That’s an amazing number. We need everybody’s help and we definitely can

use the help of anybody in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa that chooses to

volunteer.

And your skills, it can be anything from telephone skills, typing

skills to phone communication. We need HAM radio operators. We need folks

that are real comfortable around food, we need -- we even need

80-year-olds to come and hold hands with little kids who are frightened

in our shelters.

There isn’t anybody that we can’t use. We will find a way. All we ask

of them is to have the desire to come out and help your community. Learn

about your community. Learn about the things in Newport Beach and Costa

Mesa. Where are our disaster sites. Do you know what to do when the alarm

sounds, when the earthquake comes, when the flood comes? Come and learn.

Take classes.

On a donation level, what kind of donations is the Red Cross

looking for?

I think blood -- we always need blood. That’s kind of a constant need.

We just need it to stagger a little. It’s just a little overwhelming for

these guys now, but we definitely always need blood. Always.

Money is always good.

Long: Financial donations are always welcome whether it’s to the

Orange County chapter or to the national disaster relief fund because

we’ve also incurred a great cost here and we’ll keep doing it. Whatever

anyone can do to help in the community is great.

o7 To donate time, blood or money or to f7 io7 nquire about mental

health or other services of the Orange County Chapter of the American Red

Cross, call (714) 481-5300.

f7

BIO

Name: Rebecca Israel

Age: 49

Residence: Costa Mesa

Position: Acting function lead for Disaster Health Services at the

Orange County Chapter of the American Red Cross. This is a volunteer

position.

Job: Legal nurse consultant. Has been a nurse for 20 years

Family: Married to Dr. Alan Israel, three children

Hobbies: Brown belt in karate; soprano; wrote, produced and directed a

public access health forum show; serves on the board of directors of her

homeowner’s association