Atlanta

Red Cross ready to respond to Hurricane Harvey

ATLANTA — Every Red Cross chapter in the country right now is working to mobilize volunteers, and that includes right here in Metro Atlanta.

“We’re working together as a team because we know this is going to be bad,” explained Communications Officer Sherry Nicholson, who has been with the Red Cross for 25 years.

Remember Metro Atlanta’s epic flooding of 2009? During that event, north Georgia received 10 to 20 inches of rainfall, with the bull's-eye in Douglas County at 21.03 inches in just 24 hours. That amount will be widespread across southeast Texas.

Parts of Texas will receive their typical annual rainfall in just five days.


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“We’re all hearing that it’s going to be bad. And it’s easy to forget what a hurricane can do when it stalls out,” Nicholson told Channel 2’s Katie Walls.

Harvey will be the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Wilma in 2005.

Seven Emergency Response Vehicles (ERVs) will be deployed from Georgia’s Red Cross chapters to assist those in need.

Volunteer Joey Riggs showed Walls the inside of one of those trucks, where volunteers will serve food and provide cleanup supplies.

Twelve Metro Atlanta volunteers have already left for Louisiana and Texas, and more are on standby. Officials are waiting to see where the need is greatest.

“We’re going to fill it up, take as much as we can, and give out as much as we can! After we’re out, go back down the streets and do it again, because there’s going to be a lot of need,” Riggs said.

Click here if you would like to donate to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.