American Red Cross: June, 2007

June 27

Toledo blogger helps us clear up water bottle mystery

This week Toledo, Ohio held a dedication ceremony for the Veterans' Glass City Skyway.

The American Red Cross was there to hand out bottled water to visitors. Craig from Idea Treks wondered who paid for all this water and we were able to provide some info to him. See the exchange below.

Original Blog post:

Veterans’ Glass City Skyway Dedication
Idea Treks
The second picture shows the bottles of water and Special K water which the Red Cross was handing out as people got off the bus on the bridge. (I’m curious about who paid for this stuff - hopefully disaster relief funds weren’t involved)

American Red Cross comment:
Hi Craig,
Can I please clarify something that appears in your blog?
American Red Cross volunteers gave their time to pass out plain and Special K water to participants in the much awaited bridge opening. The water was donated to the ODOT and the bridge committee from Giant Eagle and the Kellogg Corporation and not purchased with donated dollars. Our volunteers were just the conduit to pass it out to walkers and other spectators to keep them hydrated in the heat of the day. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please give me a call or e-mail [redacted]. Have a good day.

Blogger return comment:
Craig Says: June 27th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Thanks very much for your clarification Diane. I appreciate you taking the time to comment on my post. I didn’t really think that disaster relief funds were used for the water, but I did wonder who had supplied it. While I’m sure the Red Cross is helped greatly by corporate donations throughout the year and during times of crisis I am a bit surprised that Giant Eagle and Kellogg’s didn’t want some type of sign on the premises stating that they had donated the water. Bloggers provide one more way for Americans to get answers! Thanks again!

June 19

Portals and Twitters

The lovely Nicki at The Birthplace of the Process of Illogical Logic gave a shout-out to the new Red Cross Twitter channel. She also highlights the ongoing Red Cross Disaster Portal we've been working on for about 6 months now.

Below is Nicki's post. Read it and check out the Twitter channel.

I’d like to introduce you guys to someone: Ike Pigott. He’s a local blogger that I ran across on Twitter some time ago. I’ve been following his blog, Occam’s RazR, for a while now. He works for Red Cross and has an extensive background in communications.

He’s recently set himself upon a personal quest to utilize the online tools and social media for disaster relief and aid. He’s created the Red Cross Online Disaster Portal and opened the Red Cross Twitter Channel.
The idea is that people in evacuation zones could “follow” the Red Cross Twitter feed from their cell phones, and find out about shelter locations and service delivery sites.

I think it’s a great idea, and I’m personally excited to be able to see first-hand the mediums that we have available to us today being put to use for such a great cause. This will be especially handy for us locally with hurricane season coming up, as well as tornado season!
If you are interested in helping out or would like more information, please contact Ike. I’m sure that he’d love to hear from you and could use any and all help sent his way!

June 18

Do You Use Flickr?

Do you use photo-sharing site Flickr?

We want you to join our American Red Cross Flickr group. Whether you take a photo of our National Headquarters building, your local chapter or your blood drive, we want to see what you're up to and what the Red Cross means to you. In photos!

Log in to Flickr.com
Go to the American Red Cross group page
Click Join This Group icon
Add your Red Cross-related photos!

We're looking forward to seeing you there.

Be Red Cross Ready

Hey kids, do you know what time it is?

It's time to Be Red Cross Ready!

We've launched an online tutorial to help you and your family prepare for emergency situations. We strongly urge you to check it out. We're quite proud of the site.

In addition to launching the site, we've created our first American Red Cross podcasts. There are 3 steps to getting prepared:

You can subscribe to a 3 episode podcast, one for each step! We believe this will be the first of many podcasts we make, so feedback is appreciated!

You should be able to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo!, Podcast Alley, Podcast.net, Odeo, Podcast Pickle, and Podcast Directory. Or just click on the links above and start listening!

June 15

Zombie invasion - A bloggy lesson in Preparedness

There was a mysterious zombie invasion all over the internet this week. More than 150 bloggers (probably way more, we lost count!) fictitiously and creatively posted about the aftermath of a zombie invasion on June 13.

Since we scour the blogosphere for talk about the Red Cross everyday, we found several mentions of these disastrous zombie events and were fooled for a number of minutes that a real disaster was unfolding!

This massive meme is a lot of fun and it has a good message.

Read, Shred and Then Burn couldn't have said it better when she posted today:
Interactive fiction can be fun; but that was not the whole of it. Thinking about any disaster and how prepared we are for it is difficult, but put it in the frame of a zombie uprising, and the drill is fun! Zombies make everything better!

That's right! We have an online tutorial that can get you Red Cross Ready right here!

3 participating bloggers even mentioned the Red Cross in their posts:

Roseseule said: Kind of glad I bought one of those Red Cross radios, but I don't want to fire it up yet. Most of the local radio is out as is the satellite radio. Glad I got out of the city.

Seborn said: Hey, I have a job for you. Yeah, you. Previous volunteer experience NOT needed. So we're (Red Cross) opening shelters now for evacuees from heavily zombied areas. According to MEMA there aren't really any unaffected areas, but people are leaving their homes and we've been told to activate our shelter plans, so bear with me. Yes, they are waiving "no weapons in the shelter."

and Seraphim777 was fooled just like we were: is it funnier that I work at the red cross and would be hip deep in this [...], or that I had no idea what you clowns were on about?