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Lending a Hand in Denver, CO

Nicole Manzanares
/
US Air National Guard

A Rhinelander volunteer is in Colorado with the American Red Cross.  Carol Miller is stationed at Disaster Relief Headquarters near Denver, south of where the floods have done the most damage.  

She says there are 600 volunteers on the scene with hundreds more set to arrive.  The job of Red Cross nurses is to take care of those who get sick or injured while volunteering for FEMA or other partner organizations.

“I supervise the nurses located throughout the state and make their assignments. And our job is to keep the Red Cross volunteers and staff and all of our partner agency volunteers – and keep them healthy, and if they do get sick or injured, find them appropriate care.”

A registered nurse herself, Miller has been volunteering with Red Cross relief efforts since Hurricane Katrina in 2001.  This is her fourth deployment.  Miller says her day starts at 8:00 am with a volunteer meeting.  She then checks in with nurses and deals with incidents throughout the day.  Wednesday for example, organizers were short on hotel rooms for new volunteers.

“And I finished last night at 10:30. They ran out of hotel rooms in this part of Denver where the headquarters is located, so we had to find a headquarters for staff – you know, a large arena.”

Miller says people are still being evacuated from smaller communities in northern Colorado, and there’s a concern about clean drinking water.  She says onsite supplies are all paid for by donations, and if people want to donate they can do so online.    Miller plans to stay in Colorado for about two weeks.

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