Home Fires Destroy Memories Every 80 Seconds

The American Red Cross responds to fires more than any other disaster. More than hurricanes. Earthquakes. Tornadoes. Fires occur in the United States every 80 seconds.

In Chicago, disaster volunteers are called to home fires about three to four times a day on a normal day. They arrive on scene oftentimes while firefighters are still there, and they provide families with food, shelter, infant formula, teddy bears for the kids, access to medication… whatever the family needs to survive.

This relief is almost entirely delivered by volunteers and funded by donors.

When we arrive, more often than not, we encounter families who are grateful. Though they may have lost everything, they say “thank goodness” that their loved ones survived.

“Everything else can be replaced,” they say.

When a family survives a fire without deaths or injuries, they usually first think of their pictures – the memories that can’t be replaced. One of my most striking memories as a disaster volunteer was helping this family wipe away smoke damage from baby photos that we were relieved to find intact.

With a single click, you can capture a memory with your camera and keep it forever, but only, if your home is not one of the 70,000 that will burn this year.

Today, in a single click and in a matter of moments, you can join a movement on Facebook to honor those who aren’t so lucky.

Visit http://every80seconds.com/and get a glimpse of what it’s like to lose your most precious memories. At the end of your visit, all of your photos will be fully recovered.

At some point in your life, though, someone close you will lose their photos forever to a real fire and will not be able to recover them. Be a part of their relief, before they need it.

Share the every80seconds.com experience with the people you love most.

Pledge a donation for every photo you can’t imagine life without.

Feel grateful.

Here's how your donation will help if you take the extra step to help a family that has been devestated by fire:

- $3 provides a comfort kit with hygiene items that preserves a client's diginity
- $6 provides a wool blanket to keep them warm if they are displaced
- $10 provides one meal
- $20 provides two meals
- $25 provides breakfast, lunch and dinner to a shelter resident who lost their home in a fire
- $50 provides five blankets for a family
- $75 provides food and shelter for a cleint for one day in a shelter
- $100 provides ten hot meals
- $150 provides supplies, such as soy formula, wipes, diapers, etc, to shelter one infant
- $200 provides one month's worth of emergency supplies for two families
- $1,000 saves the day - covers a day's worth of disaster response in the Greater Chicago region.

The every80seconds.com experience requires a high speed browser and internet connection, as well as Facebook connect permissions.

Where Does the Haiti Relief Money Go?

Today, I had the opportunity to talk with the staff of Threadless -- a t-shirt company that you should know about, if you don't already. They made a $100,000 donation about a year ago to support our relief effort in Haiti, and they wanted to know more about how the money made an impact.

There are a lot of ways that we can answer that question -- "Where does the money go?"

We can do the math: Well, if $100 can provide a cooking set, hygien pack, blankets, and water containers for a family of five, your $100,000 helped 1,000 families.

We can tell the story: "A line of men, women and children stretches around the corner of the white tent, each waiting patiently to tell their story to the attending doctors from the Red Cross mobile health clinic..." and so on.

We can provide the data: Pie charts, maps and such will show you, quite precisely where the money goes.

We can show you very touching videos with pleasant music.

But, with Threadless, this just didn't feel right. I mean, look at their Headquarters, here in Chicago:

Does this audience strike you as one that wants to hear numbers or watch more than a couple of videos? Me neither.

Talking with them today reminded me how isolated our donors must feel from the impact of their donation. It just doesn't occur to you that you actually save lives, does it?

Listen up. You do.

Even $5 bought some individual in Haiti a water container to store clean drinking water. That individual you helped with your 5 bucks may have been this kid:

You did that. Threadless did that for 19,999 additional kids. Do you get what I'm saying?

Do me (and yourself) a favor. If you gave to the Haiti relief effort, do these 3 things:

1) think about how much you gave

2) do the water container math ($5 bucks a pop)

3) and look at the faces of the people it helped.

You matter to that kid. Man oh man. You matter.