Local volunteers join Katrina relief effort
More than 8,500 Red Cross volunteers are helping victims

Joseph Raffetto of Red Bank is currently working his way through Mississippi, distributing food and water to hurricane survivors as a volunteer for the American Red Cross.

Raffetto is one of more than 100 Monmouth and Ocean county residents who volunteered for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

Last Friday, Raffetto was in Wiggins, Miss., about 25 miles from the Gulf Coast, driving a donated emergency response vehicle.

“There’s a lot of damage here,” he said in a cell-phone interview last week, “but it’s not like the coast.”

Raffetto arrived in Montgomery, Ala., on Sept. 7 and will be working until Sept. 21.

He and his team are moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, calling people out of their homes on a public address system to come out to receive meals, most of which are hot.

“Folks have just been so polite and appreciative,” he said. “I heard that a lot of supplies were not getting here as quickly as expected, so members of the community were going around to restaurants and stores that were about to lose food to the power loss, and they were bringing the food right to the feeding stations, where we were picking it up and distributing it.”

Raffetto said that he and the other volunteers who were briefed in Montgomery, were told to prepare themselves for what they would see during the course of their work.

He said as he and his team moved westward, the damage was more apparent.

“We started to notice the bigger billboards, about 30 feet high, were torn down, nothing but skeleton boards,” he said. “We started to see road signs toppled over. The forest was all chewed up and there was this distinct pleasant odor of pine in the air from all the torn up trees.”

Raffetto began volunteering with the American Red Cross after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but was not ready to volunteer for this operations at first.

“On the third and fourth days you started to see people with no food or water,” he said. “That’s when I realized the magnitude of this and I really wanted to be a part of the relief efforts.”

Raffetto said he is most surprised that he had cell phone service, and that many of the homes, except in the really rural areas, had power.

“We were told to bring our own water, own food and sleeping bags,” he said, “because they didn’t know how bad it would be down here.”

Dorothy Altin, an Ocean Township resident was also among nine volunteers deployed by the Jersey Coast Chapter of the American Red Cross, as were Augustine O’Neill of Eatontown, George H. Lammers and Al Figueroa, both of Howell, Alvin Benedetti and Phyllis Stern, both of Brick, Carl Carino of Whiting and Janet Schaller of Leonardo.

According to Hillary Cummons, at the Jersey Coast Chapter of the American Red Cross, training classes held on Sept. 6-8 were full and new classes will be scheduled. He added that more than 8,500 Red Cross volunteers have left their homes, from every state, to join thousands of local volunteers who are providing disaster relief.

“Many volunteers at the training session said they were compelled to try to help after learning the extent of the damage the storm caused,” Commons said.

The training includes things like an introduction to disasters—what to expect and what the Red Cross does, how to operate a shelter and drive emergency vehicles.

“People can volunteer for various kinds of work,” Cummons said. “They can help register people and fill out forms, serve meals in shelters, do community outreach, family and mental health counseling. We also need doctors and nurses.

“With families, friends and colleagues scattered in the face of Katrina’s fury, the American Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross have established the “Family Links Registry” to enable people to re-establish those essential relationships. Within 24 hours, more than 105,000 people had registered their whereabouts and the Web site was receiving a tidal wave of visitors,” Cummons explained.

The registry can be accessed through www.redcross.org or by calling 1-877-568-3317.

Contributions to the Disaster Relief Fund may be sent to the Jersey Coast Chapter, American Red Cross, P. O. Box 131, Tinton Falls, N.J. 07724-0131 or to the American Red Cross, P. O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013. Internet users can make a secure on-line contribution by visiting www.jerseycoast-redcross.org.

For other inquiries, please call (732) 493-9100.

Linda deNicola and Layli White contributed to this story