Category Archives: Homepage posts — Featured

Red Cross Volunteer Brought Hope and Housing Help to LA Fire Survivors and Others 

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A Red Crosser surveys damage caused by fires in LA 

What happens when you have nowhere to go after a disaster? What if your neighborhood is destroyed, or your home is no longer safe? For those affected by the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles, Calif., the American Red Cross was there to supply safe shelter, food, relief supplies, financial assistance, comfort and a specific service that only Sue Trautman and her team can provide. 

Sue, a Red Cross Northern California Coastal Region volunteer, arrived in LA about a week after the fires devastated communities across the city. She set up shop in the Red Cross offices downtown and got right to work. Sue served on the Shelter Resident Transition Team — a group of volunteers that helps evacuees in shelters create a plan to move into more stable long-term housing. 

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“A Very Different Beast”: Red Cross Volunteer Recalls the Devastation of Los Angeles Wildfires 

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It had been a children’s playground in Altadena, Calif. Now, a melted toy sat upon a melted jungle gym. Scraps of canopy were whipping in the wind. Now, it was just burned wreckage in the wake of the wildfire. Dave Crocker remembers it clearly almost a year later. “It stopped me short,” he says. 

He was in Los Angeles —the place where he was born, had grown up and gone to college. Where wildfires were a fact of life. Dave is an American Red Cross volunteer who has seen the aftermath of numerous wildfires first-hand. But this fire: it had been unusual. 

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Investing in Preparedness: Inside the CAP Bus Tour 

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When torrential rain opened over California in the winter of 2023, few could have imagined the devastation that would follow. Fueled by rare atmospheric rivers, communities were flooded with destruction like they had never seen before. Among them was Pajaro, a small Monterey County town, where homes and livelihoods were destroyed.  

While this disaster did leave behind broken levees, it also ignited a new vision for preparedness, particularly in vulnerable communities where disasters repeatedly hit the hardest.  

That realization quickly became the impetus to launch the 18th Red Cross Community Adaptation Program (CAP) across the country out of Monterey County. This is an innovative Red Cross initiative designed to strengthen local partner networks in disaster-prone areas, ensuring families have the tools and support they need before the next emergency strikes. 

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Lyra Kelly: Just Trying to be Helpful through the American Red Cross 

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Lyra Kelly demonstrates the versatile ways volunteers can help people following a disaster. Although she has management experience, here she is driving a forklift in order to get supplies delivered to families in need. (Photo courtesy of Lyra Kelly) 

I first met Lyra Kelly when we were both deployed (aka sent out to a disaster response operation) to help people severely affected by the Spring 2025 tornadoes in St. Louis. Well-organized and skilled in the proprietary programs of the American Red Cross, she was the Operations Management Supervisor, responsible for organizing all of us volunteers—some of whom were supporting people in shelters, some assigned to hotels—as well as the logistics of delivering food, fulfilling supply orders and transporting volunteers to their duties across the disaster area.  

Little did I know how incredibly experienced she was. 

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No Power, No Problem: Stranded in San Francisco

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Businesses in downtown San Francisco were closed due to the power outage

By Veronica Oberholzer

I love the Christmas season and am always looking for new holiday activities. On Saturday, December 20, I took BART from my home in Oakland to the Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts in San Francisco to see a 2 p.m. Christmas Ballet.

The theater was a dark cocoon from the outside world during the beautiful performance. In a funny piece of foreshadowing, I thought that anything could be happening in the world outside, and we wouldn’t know about it until the show was over.

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‘I’m Halfway There!’ A Red Cross Volunteer’s Journey to Safeguard 100 Homes and Empower Communities Through Fire Safety

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Hans Cardenas (right) and Hanna Malak -Regional CEO- at a Sound the Alarm Event

Hans Cardenas is a man on a mission: he aims to make 100 homes safer by installing free smoke alarms with the American Red Cross Sound the Alarm program. And he is more than halfway there already!

Sound the Alarm is part of the national Red Cross Home Fire Campaign, which aims to reduce the number of deaths from home fires. This campaign has helped save 2,063 lives since its launch in October 2014. Here in the Northern California Coastal Region, volunteers and partners have installed more than 48,500 free smoke alarms and made more than 18,000 households safer since 2014.

“I’ve made 57 homes safer since I started on May 14, 2020. Working with different teams, we installed 171 alarms,” he detailed.

Hans’ journey with the Red Cross started in 2020 as a Senior Philanthropy Officer with the Regional Fund Development Team. He spent two years facilitating financial donations from individuals across the Northern California Coastal Region. Through his role, he forged connections with donors, aligning their priorities with the Red Cross mission, which includes disaster relief, blood donation and community support. As of December 2023, he transitioned to a similar position with the San Francisco Opera. Despite his busy schedule, he still finds time to install free smoke alarms with his fellow Red Crossers, visiting communities at risk for home fires across the region. “We, the fundraisers, are very goal oriented. I was just being audacious by choosing such (a) number, but also trying to stay engaged with something I really enjoy doing,” he explained.

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