Days 1, 2, and 3

Well, unfortunately my internet was out of service until now, so I'm going to have to catch up in one post. So, I guess I'll start from the top. When I got into Philadelphia Friday night was told to go to the Airport Marriott and wait until the morning to go to headquarters in New Brunswick. I stayed the night with a nice guy from Colorado who was about as much of a biology nerd and outdoorsman as myself, so we had a good time talking. In the morning we rented a car, caught up with a few more Red Crossers, and headed to headquarters.

Headquarters turned out to be in a large, 3 story office building. It's nice because it has large open areas where cubicles used to be, so all the services can set up in the same room and have the normal war-room atmosphere. On arrival we had a brief orientation, after which I headed upstairs to the health services desk. When I got there I found a number of friends from Nashville 2010 and a couple from Chattanooga 2011. Among them was the health services chief, Teresa. I have to say, it was nice to have some familiar faces around on such a big operation. Last time I heard, we had 6,000 Red Cross volunteers in New Jersey alone. In addition, we have people from the Canadian and Mexican Red Cross (more on that later).

Well, after orientation and in-processing, most of the rest of the day was spent sitting around with minimal activity since I had missed the boat on most stuff since things get started pretty early in the morning. I helped out where I could and waited for my ride to the hotel and roommate to be, another EMT, Jacob from San Jose, CA (and he's 21, too, a rare sight on a DRO). Well, we got back to the hotel and went to bed pretty early, which was good considering that we ended up having a big day Sunday.

Sunday morning we reported straight to the DRO warehouse so that we could go out to bulk distribution sights and set up aid stations there. The warehouse is a cavernous building filled with unfathomable quantities of post-disaster necessities. For a few hours we helped load the trucks and headed out when they were full. I caught a ride to Atlantic City on a 26' box truck filled with snacks, diapers, cleaning supplies, water, and more. After a short 2 1/2 hour ride we set up shop in a parking lot and started distributing what we had. Fortunately people kept themselves in order, and we were able to get everything distributed. Even better was that we were working with 2 people from the Mexican Red Cross and got to know them and the rest of their group. After making the supply drop, we went to dinner with all 11 of our new friends from Mexico and then I rode back to New Brunswick with them. It was nice to talk about how things work for them, and it also gave me a good opportunity to work on my Spanish a little. We made it back to the hotel by the time it was all said and done it was a 15 hour work day and I went to bed as soon as I could, comfortable knowing that I wouldn't have to throw 20 pound boxes across the back of a truck again.

Today started at headquarters with a job, go to the shelters a Monmouth Park and Rutger to pick up paperwork for National HQ. So, off we went to Monmouth Park, a horse race track in Oceanport. Also known as tent city, it is a massive shelter set up jointly by the Red Cross, the state of NJ, and FEMA.  By now the shelter has been moved into the concourse of the track, but for a number of days people were housed in massive tents in the parking lot, complete with flooring, heating, and water. We drove through the old tent shelters after getting the paperwork to marvel at the sight. After this, we headed back up to Rutgers. The shelter at Rutger is in a gym and is set to be closing in the next few days. After finishing our pick-ups, we returned to headquarters to sort and copy all 700+ patient care records we got. This took most of the rest of the day, but when we were done we were able to take the rest of the day and call some clients and help some people out. It felt good to speak with someone with a true need who had no other options and give them the information they needed to start recovering. While the details of tomorrow are uncertain, hopefully it will include more speaking with clients and giving them the help they need.

Below I have added some pictures so you can get an idea of what is going on here. I won't give captions, you can probably figure out what paragraph above they go with.