The Red Cross |
 Dave Thurlow, Host |
Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. Established in 1881, the American Red Cross is one of the first organizations to respond when a natural disaster hits. I recently spoke with Ann Stingel, the International Spokesperson for the Red Cross, about weather disasters.
Ms Stingle what types of weather disasters are most common?
AS: "Well, we find some of the most common weather related disasters for the American Red Cross here in the United States is flooding.. Its the kind of slow onslaught disaster that doesn't always get media attention. But we find that that consumes an awful lot of our relief effort for domestic disaster and that's very true internationally. China, Bangladesh, you know, those countries are just every year, just huge floods and enormous damage that may or may not make the news here, but flooding is the big one. Also an awful lot of loss of life due to flooding."
DT: "So its the flooding...that's the long term commitment for an organization such as the Red Cross, because the problems going to persist for months."
AS: "Right, and we find things like this is where the bulk of the money goes from our disaster relief fund, because you have something that's very slow onset and then it takes a while. The time period for people to be out of their homes and then back and the time commitment for assistance and that kind of thing goes on and it drains our disaster relief fund without much attention to the fact that its doing that."
Today, the Red Cross has 1.4 million volunteers who help people worldwide during weather disaster relief efforts. Our show is underwritten by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.
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