Early Wed morning, U.S. Marshals NY/NJ Regional Fugitive Task Force attempted to serve a warrant in Trenton, NJ; it went horribly wrong. Three officers injured, innocent passerby killed, & a 35 hour standoff. Many of his neighbors were evacuated, some being awakened by LEOs banging on their door. I assume if that happened to me, I wouldn’t take the time to shower & pack a bag before GTFO, especially if groggy from sleeping. Many of the neighbor’s didn’t have access to their cars because they were parked in the line of fire.
In such situations does the Red Cross provide personal care items?
I assume they have things like toothbrushes because they are relatively inexpensive, small, & one size fits all but what about things like clean underwear/clothes? Were these folks sitting around in their PJs for two days?
Yeah, I know we should all have a bug-out bag ready to go, but what if it’s sitting by the door on the ‘hot’ side of the house?
I think they will also coordinate with other groups to fill unmet needs such as clothing. The site specifically mentions house fires as one of their largest areas of disaster relief. Clothing must be an area that comes up frequently.
And medications. Most chapters/areas have groups and people they can reach out to. Your life won’t be normal by any means but basic survival is assured and they will hold you over until you can start doing things for yourself.
Wow, I live in Trenton – how did I miss this (well, maybe because this crap isn’t exactly rare here).
Different situation, but:
When we were evacuated from the Southern California fire of 2003(?) we basically stuffed the dogs, my laptop containing my nearly finished doctoral dissertation, and our “banking, insurance and important documents” box. We also grabbed a few changes of clothes, but we were discombobulated and ended up with some weird stuff. Thankfully, SoCal basically shut down for a week so I didn’t have to wear one bedroom slipper, one loafer, pajama bottoms, and a dress shirt to work for five days.
Honestly, we should have left hours before mandatory evacs so we could have packed smart stuff – we were in denial that the fire was moving so fast.
The Red Cross put us up at a motel, provided personal care stuff (toothbrushes, soap, shampoo, and so on) and vouchers for meals. The neighbors whose homes burned at the bottom of our hill were relocated and given a lot of support to get restarted. Thank goddesses our house didn’t burn, it was a miracle.
At any rate: we found the Red Cross to be efficient, compassionate, and kind. One worker even brought pet food to us folks who were in the hotel with our animals.