American Red Cross Prepares for Hurricane Ian Relief

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By Jamison Hixenbaugh

ERIE, Pa. (Erie News Now) – As Hurricane Ian approaches Florida, the American Red Cross is ready to help out with emergency relief.

On a national scale, the Red Cross has sent hundreds of volunteers and tens of thousands of relief supplies to Florida.

The American Red Cross of Erie is closely monitoring the situation.

“What we first do is we check with all of the volunteers that are willing to deploy,” said American Red Cross of Erie Executive Director Mary Rogers. “I know that we have a couple volunteers that may be going out, but we don’t have a timeline yet.”

In the coming days, volunteers will help out at evacuation shelters which have been set up by the Red Cross ahead of the oncoming storm.

“We have volunteers do a variety of things,” said Rogers. “In the early days, it will be sheltering and taking care of people in shelters. After that, it could be damage assessment and distributing emergency relief supplies and items like that.”

If you would like to help out, Rogers recommends donating blood.

“If we can’t collect blood in a a state that has been impacted, that reduces the pool for the rest of the country,” said Rogers. “Please go to redcross.org and if you can donate, please do.”