American Red Cross

The American branch of the Red Cross is the humanitarian movement within the United States that provides similar functions such as disaster relief aid and prevention of human suffering as its international sister organizations. Disaster relief help is just one of its many functions. The American Red Cross helps the needy, provides communication services for the military, the collection of blood and related products for those that need it, provides educational resources about health and safety, and international disaster relief aid development initiatives.

All of the decisions made by the American Red Cross are done by volunteers and donations from the community help support it. It has 700 chapters and 36 different Blood Service region all across the country. About 30,000 volunteers provide mobilized services for American Red Cross disaster relief duties for people effected by almost 70,000 disasters annually. It is also the largest supplier of blood and blood-related products, providing them to over 3,000 hospitals across the entire nation.

Disaster Services:
The American Red Cross responds quickly to provide disaster relief help to many different disasters, ranging from apartment fires to situations that are much more severe, such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, spill hazards, vehicle accidents, explosions, tsunamis and many other natural and man-made disasters. The American Red Cross is not a government organization, although it has an enforced responsibility and authority that was granted in 1905 by a congressional charter which read:

“[The American Red Cross may] carry on a system of national and international relief in time of peace and apply the same in mitigating the sufferings caused by pestilence, famine, fire, floods, and other great national calamities, and to devise and carry on measures for preventing the same.”

This congressional charter gave the American Red Cross an obligation to provide disaster relief help to the nation and the victims that are effected by emergencies. In the event of a disaster or national emergency, no matter how severe, the American Red Cross provides diaster relief aid in the form of shelter, food, clean water and medical services to people who need it and were affected by the crisis. The disaster relief aid provided by the organization also gives families and victims the assistance needed to carry on their normal routines and start their life up again. They even enlist multilingual volunteers in situations that may need it, especially if the American Red Cross helps nations abroad.

Many people believe that the American Red Cross, in addition to disaster relief help, they also carry out search and rescue missions and send ambulances to areas effected by a major disaster. This is not the case, however, and is a common misconception by the public. The American Red Cross provides disaster relief aid but they do not perform immediate-response actions. Their goal is, rather, to perform services that look more towards the long-term so that people can be put back on their feet.