VIDEO: Mississippi Red Cross Sends Volunteers to Texas

TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI)- As Hurricane Harvey slams the coast of Texas, residents in the Magnolia State are wasting no time to lend a hand.

The Mississippi Red Cross is heading the Gulf Coast to aid victims of the storm.

Volunteers met earlier today for a briefing on what to expect.

Joe Lukas and Carol Summerall are getting Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicle number 1183 ready.

It is one the vehicles assigned to the North Mississippi Chapter of the Red Cross. Next week, Summerall and another volunteer from Greenville will drive it to the coast to assist in the recovery from the storm.

It is Lukas’ responsibility to make sure everything checks out.

“Basically it’s stripped down to fighting weight. We’re making sure it will carry any supplies that are divied out and assigned to it and to make sure that it’s in proper working order. We check all the lights, the engine the equipment and we make sure that when we’re down there we don’t have any problems with this far as mechanically or otherwise,” says Lukas.

“We have to prepare the ERV for deployment. That means we have to take everything out of it because once you get to your area they will load it with what is needed specific to the disaster.”
Summerall, who recently retired from the city of Columbus Fire and Rescue Department has dealt with many disasters,” says Summerall.

“I was driver with the fire department. I did have to go out to Hurricane Katrina with the Health Department for critical stress management. Since I have been retired I volunteered with Red Cross, I’ve been sent to Texas before so I know kind of what to expect. But all of these disasters they’re not exactly the same so you just have to be prepared to be unprepared,” says Lukas.

As of right now, the Tupelo unit will be dispatched to Louisiana but if it is determined at a later point that they don’t need them there they’ll move on to Texas where the brunt of the storm has hit.

“They’re coming from different parts of our state and some other areas and plus the local ones that are already stationed there. So the only way to know that is really on Monday or Tuesday when the fleet is more organized and gathered together,” says Lukas.

Summerall says they will be there for at least 10 days.

“You really don’t want to go anymore than two weeks at a time because you do need to go back and recoup and decompress and get yourself together because you are dealing with a lot of disaster and a lot of people that have had damage and that’s their livelihood,” says Summerall.

The Red Cross says another unit will be brought to Tupelo to handle any potential emergencies on the homefront.