GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A pair of volunteers deployed an emergency response vehicle from Green Bay to assist in response efforts for Hurricane Helene.
Their vehicle is filled with water bottles, first-aid supplies, and ready-to-eat meals.
Northeast Wisconsin Red Cross Volunteer Lisa Mertens has helped out in extreme weather events a few times before.
“I have done a couple of deployments down in Arkansas for some tornadoes, and then I actually was there a year ago for Hurricane Idalia,” she said.
Mertens emphasized a need for volunteers to be flexible and ready for anything.
“Everything is changing by the minute,” she said. “They may change our route before we get there just because of the storm’s path or maybe something else is needed that they need to switch my position.”
Hurricane Helene marks the third time that the American Red Cross is deploying volunteers and relief supplies amid a hurricane in Florida.
It is also expected to be one of the most rapidly intensifying hurricanes on record, having strengthened to a category 4 storm as of Thursday.
Dennis Meyer is the second team member deploying to the Florida Panhandle. He said it never gets easier to see communities destroyed.
“I’m just a big softy,” he said. “I get emotional because we see all sorts of bad stuff that we wouldn’t want to experience.”
Nationwide, the Red Cross assigned 360 trained disaster workers to help those in need.
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