For two weeks, relief workers and volunteers have rallied together in New York and Washington, D.C., to assist in recovery efforts after the terrorist attacks. Now, Lane County volunteers are among them.
Three Lane County Red Cross volunteers are currently providing assistance at the disaster sites. Howard
Guillory is working in family services at the former World Trade Center. Shantel Smith is working at the Pentagon doing mass care, and Cecil Kribs is working in family services at hospitals near the Pentagon.
Kribs, a Eugene resident and retired middle school principal who last worked at Madison Middle School, has been doing volunteer work with Red Cross for the last five years. Kribs said he became involved with Red Cross because he “wanted to try and leave the world a little bit better.”
“I wanted to give something back,” he said.
Kribs has been working primarily at the Washington Hospital Center, as well as at the Walter Reed Army Hospital. His duties in family services involve providing food, clothing and shelter to the family members of those who were injured and hospitalized in the attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Kribs works alongside a nurse and a mental health volunteer.
“The number (of disaster victims in the hospital) is small now, but they are very severe,” Kribs said.
Kribs said this is a difficult and emotional time for the victims and their families because they go through cycles of grief, anger and self-pity.
“You see the whole gamut of emotions,” he said.
Kribs is spending about three weeks at the Pentagon site. He will return to Eugene in less than two weeks, unless he is asked to stay longer.
“It’s a pretty big hole,” Kribs said of the site. “The pictures do not convey the full impact of it.”
Locally, the Lane County chapter of the American Red Cross has raised more than $70,000 for the National Disaster Relief Fund, said Red Cross spokeswoman Jenny Carrick. Many local businesses and individuals have contributed to the fund. This money would normally be used for disasters throughout the nation, Carrick said, but right now all the money in the fund is being donated to New York and the Pentagon.
“Fundraising is a huge piece of what the Red Cross is doing locally,” Carrick said. As of Sept. 17, the American Red Cross had received nationwide donations of $106 million to assist the terrorist attack relief efforts, she said. That figure includes both cash and the value of donated goods and materials.
Some University students are also trying to raise money to help with the disaster. The Theta Chi fraternity is planning on doing a fundraiser sometime in the next few weeks. Fraternity member Nick Kucha said Theta Chi will hand out ribbons at the Valley River Center and ask for contributions to aid the disaster victims.
Blood donations around the country have also greatly increased since the tragedy. Doug Engle, the executive director of the Lane Memorial Blood Bank, said that the bank’s blood donations increased 35 percent in the week following the attacks. However, no blood from Lane County was sent to the disaster sites.
“We were preparing to send blood to New Jersey by military air, but we got the word (the day after the attacks) that it wasn’t necessary,” said.
In fact, only a handful of states outside the disaster states were asked to send any blood, Engle said.
“(Most of) the casualties that were encountered were not the type that needed blood,” Engle said. He added that when blood is donated, it is mostly in preparation for the future. “The blood that was transferred (to the disaster sites) was collected the previous days and months,” Engle said.
Regardless of when and where the blood is used, the national disaster has inspired many more people than usual to give blood.
The Lane Memorial Blood Bank is having a blood drive Oct. 16 and 17 in the Fir Room of the EMU.