As Hurricane Sandy is threatening the East Coast local Red cross members are ready to help. Saturday the Executive Director of the Elkhart County Red Cross boarded a plane for New York.
There Frank Connolly will be responsible for shelter operations in the state and New York City for the hurricane. He expects to be there for two weeks and is preparing for whatever the storm brings. "Because we don't know what the impact will be what we want to be able to do is respond to anything. So we will go through our database and make sure our shelters in the area our alerted and aware we may be calling them," said Connolly.
He added that they will also make sure shelters know once they are called they've got to be ready to go in 30 minutes. Connolly will also be calling volunteers and getting supplies ready for the shelters.
Connolly got the call Friday that he needed to head to New York. He's done this before so he said he always has a bag packed and ready to go for when he gets the call to head to a disaster.
For now Connolly said it is just him going to New York but he said the local volunteers are ready to go if they're needed.
Red Cross volunteers in Southwest Michigan are also on standby to help with hurricane Sandy if need be. The American Red Cross of West Michigan said, "In West Michigan, the American Red Cross is already at work, contacting and recruiting volunteers to travel over the weekend to the East coast. Through a coordinated effort across several states, volunteers will be pre-positioned to ensure the fastest response possible should the hurricane turn inland."
