This article was posted on nyredcross.org.
When the Greater New York Chapter of the American Red Cross sent its Rapid Response Team to aid victims of Hurricane Gustav, there was a poignant irony in the timing. The team is especially well-equipped for such missions partly because several of its key members joined as a direct result of the 9/11 disaster, whose seventh anniversary approached while they were in Alexandria.
The 46-member team was deployed to oversee food-and-shelter operations at the Louisiana State University Ag Center Shelter – the state’s first “mega-shelter” – aided by 50 workers from other ARC chapters and in cooperation with the university as well as state and federal agencies.
Scott Graham, the New York Chapter’s Chief Response Officer and Red Cross Site Manager at the LSU shelter, visited New York’s Ground Zero soon after 9/11 as a member of a U.S. Marine Corps Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force. Graham had lost a good friend – Ray Downey, Chief of Special Operations for the Fire Dept. of New York (FDNY) and a former Marine – when one of the twin towers collapsed. Downey had been leading the evacuation and rescue effort.
Read the rest of the story here.
