Your Red Cross Update

In an effort to make our neighbors safer, volunteers from our Central Coast Chapter joined forces with our partners this past weekend to install 121 free smoke alarms in homes in the city of Watsonville. In all, our Sound the Alarm – Save a Life activity helped make 58 adults and children safer through the installations and accompanying safety education.

A special thanks go out to our approximately 40 Red Cross volunteers and our partners — Amazon Books, Wells Fargo Bank, Seaside High School, Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, and Watsonville Fire Department — who made the day possible.

As I had a chance to visit with some of our volunteers that day I realized that some of them had just returned from deployment from the recent Northern California fires, where some had been on assignment for up to 2 weeks.

What struck me was the willingness of these devoted Red Cross team members to return home and jump back out there to ensure that members of our community had what they would need to potentially save lives if they were ever in a fire situation in their own home.

I feel truly honored to get to work alongside such dedicated and caring people.

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About the author: Michele Averill is the CEO of the American Red Cross of the Central Coast.

See additional photos of this event.