The Greater Chattanooga Area American Red Cross is gearing up for Tropical Storm Gustav. It's expected to strengthen and make landfall somewhere on the US Gulf Coast early next week. John Hitchens is the Program Services Director at the Red Cross. He explains, "Right now in Nashville they're assembling different scenarios... If it touched down in Texas, where you would send teams. If it touched down in Alabama or if it touched down in Florida, which teams you would assemble and where you would move them." Even though any landfall is several days away, the volunteers are ready. Claudia Moore is the Red Cross's Marketing and PR Director. "Mother Nature doesn't really give us any advance warning so we have to be prepared, to have a plan," she said Wednesday. That's an important lesson learned from Hurricane Katrina. Now they and these Emergency Response Vehicles are ready anything. "It could be that we send a small number of people out somewhere else but it also could be that they relocated a large number of people to this area, in which case we would have a whole different plan," adds Hitchens. The training of Red Cross volunteers happens year round as volunteers help out with fire victims and other local disasters. "So it's really, really important that we have very experienced folks going down there to give some relief to the local Red Cross workers and provide them with the time so they can go ahead and deal with their own situations," says Moore. "Our volunteers, their bags are packed. They're ready to go. Their families are taken care of," Hitchens adds. Chattanooga's first volunteers are to head to Meridian, Mississippi to be dispatched whenever and wherever the storm hits. To learn more www.chattanoogaredcross.org [2].
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