Punxsutawney Prediction

It was a bright day in Punxsutawney, PA this morning and we all know what that means…. Phil saw his shadow. As the rest of the world sits and wonders if the prophesying groundhog will be correct about our future winter weather, we DAT members begin to worry about other things….

For example:
Exactly how many pairs of socks are we going to be wearing to our next fire?

The American Red Cross responds to disasters in all weather conditions: weather (get it, weather/whether?!) it’s a balmy 40 degrees like we had for Super Bowl Sunday or a blistering -16, we’ll be there.

Generally speaking, as the temperature drops our number of responses skyrocket. On a consistent basis we have seen incident numbers go from 0-2 a day in the summer months to around 4-6 a day during the chillier months of November through January. We even saw a spike in responses in the middle of December when there were 14 incidents in a 24 hour period (fires and pipe bursts causing flooding)!

Often times, when responding to fires clients will ask us how many fires we normally respond to and are usually shocked at our response.
In case you’re wondering, here’s some information to let you in on exactly how much the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago’s Disaster Services Team does in the Chicagoland area:

• Last week, we had 20 separate incidents. An incident can be a fire, flood, Carbon Monoxide leak…. Anything disastrous


• We opened 84 cases and assisted 88 individuals


• In the last six months, the ARCGC has assisted 3,338 people and have been to over 700 incidents.
  
  

Impressed?
Intrigued?
Give us a call.
Volunteer today!

Sam and Lily