How You Can Reach Out to Hurricane Victims with Help from the Red Cross Dakotas Region

The American Red Cross continues to send volunteers from around the country to help keep the death toll from rising

FARGO, ND — At least 40 people have lost their lives in Texas since Hurricane Harvey made landfall.

The American Red Cross continues to send volunteers from around the country to help keep the death toll from rising.

Lynn Speral, CEO of the Red Cross Dakotas Region is in our studio.

NICK BROADWAY: Lynn, a lot of people want to help, but being that we are in the Midwest, we’re pretty far away from Texas. What’s the best way for people to get involved?

LYNN SPERAL: The best way to help is through your financial donations and that way we can get the help to those that are needing it and the exact things that they need. Currently, we are working on sheltering and feeding. We had over 42,000 people in shelters just last night and it’s an extraordinary need right there. Also, volunteering! We have so far sent 31 volunteers and we will continue that likely for the next several weeks and months.

NB: That’s 31 volunteers just from North Dakota or the region?

LS: We are the Dakotas Region, which represents North and South Dakota and 10 counties in northwest Minnesota. We cover 160,000 square miles and 128 counties in there so they’re [volunteers] from all over the region.

NB: The storm has kind of been rocking Texas throughout the past week. At what point did the Red Cross begin preparing to send help and send the volunteers down to the Texas and Gulf Coast area?

LS: The Red Cross overall has been tracking this storm for a long time with the help of meteorologists. Our team started planning as long as a week ago Monday, so we’ve been roughly two weeks. We put things into high gear toward the end of last week when we knew it was going to hit ground and we knew it was going to stay there and anticipated all of that rain.

NB: Up here, we are very familiar with severe flooding in the Red River Valley region. Would you say that the volunteers that are from here heading down there, and also, the people giving their financial contributions, would you say this is kind of a way to pay it forward?

LS: Absolutely. You think about the flooding that we’ve had here and there were people from all over the country that came here to help us through the Red Cross and the financial assistance as well. What a wonderful way for us to get to step up. We understand flooding, we understand that loss, we understand that emotional toll and we get to go and provide help down to people that we don’t even know.