We do disasters, large and small

The night gave meaning to the expression "Oh-Dark-Thirty," a gloomy, cold, rainy night, and I was hurtling through it this morning, following two tail lights a hundred feet ahead. It was so middle-of-the-night that the only radio station I found was playing Christmas music. Other stations had signed off until dawn. "Oh Holy Night" and Mel Torme's "The Christmas Song" gave a surreal sensation to the night. Ahead, a house had burned down to the floorboards, and lives had been shattered.

This is the job most people never think of when they hear "Red Cross." Oh yeah, the blood drives and the first aid classes. Few people think about disaster services, except for the Big Disasters, the tsunamis and the earthquakes and the Katrinas. But these dark rural roads in the middle of the night is where Red Cross volunteers spend most of their time and energy. A call in the middle of the night from a rural fire chief sets off a response from on-call Red Cross volunteers, who find the location of the small disaster and the survivors, huddling beneath a tree behind the burned-out hulk of a mobile home. They're luck to be alive, but you don't tell them that. They don't look so lucky at the moment.

Don't doubt that this is a disaster of monumental proportions for one family. All is lost — home, furniture, clothing, medications, shoes, identification cards, keys, precious photos and mementos. The Red Cross' role is to get the clients through the initial shock of this devastation. A place to lay your head, a change of clothing, a pair of shoes, some food: It goes a long way toward bridging the gap between Before and Now What? "Comfort kits" provide little things that you might never think of but are as essential as clothing — toothbrush, toothpaste, antiperspirant, etc. In bigger disasters, clients are grouped into shelters, where basic needs can be attended to. But in a typical week, the local chapter attends to at least one single-family fire, a disaster of gargantuan proportions for those directly affected. Each year, Red Cross responds to 70,000 home fires nationwide.

In the dark of night, with incongruous Christmas carols playing background music, the work goes on where few notice.