Ready or Not?

The Red Cross must move fast to prepare for the worst

With predictions for an above-average hurricane system this year, and a new warning that terrorists are plotting an attack against the United States, questions about whether the American Red Cross is adequately prepared for the next big disaster are becoming more pressing.

“I think we’re far better prepared for a Katrina-like event now than we were two years ago, but that doesn’t mean we are where we need to be,” says Mark W. Everson, the charity’s chief executive.

The Red Cross mounted by far the largest disaster response in its 126-year history during Hurricane Katrina, but it was criticized for an effort that was at times disorganized, and for failing to properly assist many of the local nonprofit and religious organizations that rushed to help victims.

Three major changes at the charity this year can all be pegged, in part, to criticism over its handling of recovery efforts during Katrina, which devastated portions of three states in 2005.

Marsha J. Evans, the charity’s chief executive during Katrina, resigned in December 2005, in the wake of the criticism. In April, the organization finally hired Mr. Everson as her permanent replacement, heading the organization at its Washington headquarters.

Also in April, Congress passed legislation that will shrink the Red Cross’s board from 50 members to a maximum of 20 by 2012, and provide more authority to its chief executive officer.

In the same month, Congress revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will take over responsibility for coordinating the provision of shelter, food, and first aid to disaster victims, a role that the Red Cross had previously filled under the country’s National Response Plan.

Rehearsing Scenarios

The Red Cross also has been taking less-visible steps to respond better next time. The chaos that followed Katrina has persuaded Red Cross officials that they need to work more closely with others to anticipate the next catastrophe.

As part of that process, the Red Cross has identified a list of the worst possible disasters — such as a powerful hurricane hitting New York City or Miami, a large-scale terrorist attack on the nation’s capital, or a major earthquake ripping through Los Angeles or San Francisco — and is running through response scenarios with city, state, and federal emergency officials and other nonprofit groups.

“Any one of these scenarios is daunting,” says Joseph C. Becker, American Red Cross senior vice president for preparedness and response. “They would be many times the size of Katrina if they really hit.”

Even though the Red Cross has an operating deficit, in the first year after Katrina it spent $80-million on new equipment and other materials to better prepare for the next big hurricane. The charity built warehouses, stocked them with supplies and rations, and equipped its chapters with high-tech communications equipment.

But the organization realizes that those investments are only part of the challenge. In this second year after Katrina, the Red Cross has focused on building alliances with other national and local nonprofit organizations, so that during the next disaster it can quickly provide food, equipment, and cash to other charities that are aiding displaced people.

It’s clear that the charity’s response to Katrina could have been better. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office last year said the relatively short two- to three-week rotations worked by Red Cross staff members and volunteers led to communication problems with FEMA.

The Red Cross acknowledged the problems and has made changes. The Red Cross now has a full-time person in each of the 10 regions where FEMA has offices who will work closely with federal emergency planners.

The charity also has hired new full-time workers in each of the 14 states at highest risk of a disaster to work with state emergency officials.

“The earliest days of a disaster aren’t a good time to get to know each other,” Mr. Becker says.

Relief ‘Reservists’

Some 245,000 Red Cross workers responded to Katrina and two other major hurricanes in 2005, but more than 95 percent of the workers were volunteers. The Red Cross now has several hundred “reservists” — emergency responders with special skills who, unlike the charity’s huge corps of volunteers, are paid when they are working at a disaster site.

“We can control their lives,” Mr. Becker says, “and they’re there as long as we want them to be there.”

Red Cross officials say the change that makes FEMA — rather than the Red Cross — responsible for organizing the initial response following a disaster was made before hurricane season so that there would be no doubt about who’s in charge. The decision will be incorporated into the updated National Response Plan, to be released in August.

Mr. Becker says that the switch was made because FEMA is a formal arm of the federal government and can better mobilize federal resources.

“We weren’t kicking and screaming when we left the room,” Mr. Becker says. “It made sense to everybody involved.”

The change will have little or no impact on the Red Cross’s main disaster operations — running shelters and providing food, counseling, and other assistance, according to Red Cross officials.

Thanks to the new investments in infrastructure, Red Cross chapters near coastal metropolitan areas are prepared to house and feed as many as 500,000 evacuees for up to six days. The charity now has 1.5-million square feet of warehouse space near coastal areas stocked with meals, water, and other supplies.

In 22 cities, the Red Cross now has satellite trucks, which will ensure that officials at local chapters have phone and Internet access even when all phone and power lines are down following a storm. The charity will supply satellite trucks to chapters in another 20 cities next year.

Deficit Woes

These costs come at a time when the Red Cross is running an operating deficit, though Mr. Everson declines to say how much. Nearly all of the $2.3-billion that the Red Cross raised for Katrina — aside from about 4.5 percent for “back office” expenses — must go to the recovery effort and can’t be used to prepare for future disasters. The Red Cross learned that lesson the hard way, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when controversy erupted over its plan to divert some of the nearly $1-billion raised to prepare for possible attacks elsewhere.

Twenty-one companies have committed to give at least $1-million apiece over three to five years to a fund that the Red Cross can tap immediately after a disaster occurs, but the charity hasn’t yet developed a broad-based campaign for raising dollars for community preparedness during non-disaster periods.

“It’s one of our toughest challenges,” Mr. Becker says. “When America sees something horrific on TV they want to help and they’re very generous to the Red Cross. But getting Americans to recognize the value of investing in our infrastructure, so that we’re able to respond, is tough.”

The Red Cross says it is committed to creating partnerships so that it can better respond to the next disaster. At the national level, the charity is working with 130 organizations, including groups like the NAACP — it has provided training at no charge so that 1,000 of that organization’s members can become emergency volunteers — and the North American Mission Board, the domestic-missions arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has 73,000 trained volunteers.

“We’re looking at how we can cross-train our volunteers and their volunteers so that they can better relate,” says Mickey Caison, the mission board’s director of adult-volunteer mobilizations.

A ‘Plug and Play’ Model

The tougher work for the Red Cross, according to Mr. Becker, is forming relationships with small nonprofit groups and religious organizations, the kind that were key players in the immediate response to Katrina.

“The easy thing is the cots and blankets,” Mr. Becker says. “The hard thing is the relationships. They happen one at a time.”

John G. Davies, president of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, which raised $44-million for Katrina relief efforts, says smaller groups and churches in Baton Rouge provided shelter to nearly as many people as did the Red Cross following Katrina. He says the Red Cross didn’t provide the smaller groups with much help then, and does not appear too interested in striking partnerships with them now.

“I would love to think that the Red Cross has a plug-and-play model for local nonprofits that are playing an important role,” Mr. Davies says, referring to the need to work out partnerships before the next disaster. “But we haven’t seen that happening.”

Vic Howell, chief executive of the Louisiana Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cress, concedes that the Red Cross failed to provide timely help to some smaller groups during Katrina.

“We could have done better,” he says. “But when you’re in the heat of battle trying to save lives, you don’t have time to stop and figure out how to add other pieces to the puzzle.”

Yet he rejects Mr. Davies’s contention that the Red Cross is not actively seeking partners today. He says his chapter had contacted, by phone or mail, nearly all the groups that provided shelter during Katrina. He would like them to sign formal partnerships via a memorandum of understanding if they’re interested in helping again following a future disaster.

During the next hurricane, some churches might choose to simply turn over their facility to the Red Cross so that it can use the building as a shelter, he says. Others groups might have enough volunteers to run a shelter in their own building by themselves. In that case, the Red Cross would sign a deal agreeing to provide the organization with supplies and other financial support.

“We’re just asking them to tell us up front if they want to participate and which way they want to participate,” Mr. Howell says.

Even so, Mr. Howell acknowledges, signing partnership deals with smaller groups has been slow work, and only a few have signed agreements. “Many of them are saying, ‘After having done it one time, we don’t want to do it again.’ Others are saying, ‘We will help, but we don’t want to sign up right now.’ We’re trying to explain to them that the more you can work with us in advance, the more we can help you.”

Reaching Out

Raymond A. Jetson, chief executive of the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps, a charity started by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco after the 2005 hurricanes, says his organization has worked with the national office of the Red Cross to provide summer activities to more than 10,000 displaced children.

“I do see efforts on the part of the Red Cross to reach out and begin to build those critical relationships to serve people who are impacted by disasters,” he says. “Unfortunately, it will only be in the midst of another disaster that the strength of those relationships will be made manifest.”

Even as the Red Cross forges partnerships to extend its reach, its officials like to remind people that they have to be their own first responders. “We’re just barely moving the needle on citizen preparedness,” Mr. Becker says.

He points to a nationwide telephone poll of 1,000 people that the Red Cross conducted in May 2006. Some 52 percent of respondents said they had a disaster kit containing items like food, water, and a flashlight that could help them get by for three days without power or utilities. That’s up from 45 percent in a similar survey in July 2005, but Mr. Becker expected a greater increase given the public awareness about Katrina.

“There might have been a perception in the past that, ‘Gee, the army of Red Cross volunteers is going to help us,’” says Sam Tidwell, chief executive officer of the American Red Cross of Greater Miami & the Keys. “Well, the army isn’t us. It’s the people that are here.”