Doing what I can.

Yesterday, I drove down to the Red Cross and signed up for a three-week stint down in Louisiana. Sometimes, a body gets sick of talking and wants to start doing.

I returned this afternoon for my Mass Casualty training session prior to my Friday deployment. Four other local folks were there for pre-deployment training. We spent two hours there, learning how the Red Cross works and about the sort of work that we’d be doing.

I was really impressed by how much that they do. When there’s a house fire, the fire company puts out the fire — they don’t provide food, clothing, shelter, or medication. That’s the Red Cross, who shows up right on the fire company’s heels. And those people from the Red Cross are volunteers, folks who have gone through the training and want to make a difference. Same for a tornado, flood, forest fire, blizzard or, of course, hurricane. They arrive as early as possible, and they stay until everybody is taken care of. They’re planning on supporting Gulf residents for the next ten years.

Afterwards, I talked with the program director about getting started — my flight, what to pack, when I’d be back, and so on. It was then that he discovered that they couldn’t book me on a flight soon enough. The flights are booked, and I couldn’t leave until Monday, at the earliest. As all deployments are three weeks in length, that would get me back too late — I have to be at the Sorensen Institute session in Richmond on Friday evening. If I’m not there, I don’t graduate from the program. (I missed the September session last week’s, because of the wedding.)

Bummer.

This is the story of my last week. Since Sunday, I’ve tried to volunteer with two dozen organizations. Nobody but the Red Cross is taking volunteers right now. Everybody from FEMA to the animal-rescue organizations are saying “stay away” or “help only if you already live here,” with the latter being teeny-tiny highly-local groups. It’s easy to get the impression that every organization under the sun is looking for help, but 95% of them are only seeking money right now.

There will be many years in which to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Now just happens to be a time when I can afford to take three weeks to head down and help out round-the-clock. I’m not done trying to find an organization that will put me to work for the next few weeks, but I’m very nearly out of ideas.