Hi, we're from the Red Cross, we're here to Bureaucracy you

Lest anyone think I'm trying to pick on the Red Cross, please do not mis-understand, I have donated to the Red Cross for Katrina Disaster Relief, have donated for other causes, and will donate again in the future (in all probability).

Yet I will not give them a pass, any more than the usual crowd of Bush bashers is with their current attempts to belittle the Disaster response efforts, and otherwise denigrate the current administration.

The American Red Cross can be a great organization, but they can just as easily be a nightmare that does more harm than good through their own efforts. Below is an an article clipped from TownTalk.com that discusses problems in the current relief effort. I'm sure someone will claim it's racism, classism, or the fault of the Bush administration or the evil GOP. It can't possibly be because of a lack of common sense, and can't have happened in response to prior problems with a lack of control over money that was spent by the Red Cross, or anything like that.

Anyway, article follows, headline links. Warning, clicking on link goes to printer friendly version of article and will cause your computer to try to print the article. Just click cancel on the printer selection to stop the print out and just read the article.

Red Cross bureaucracy causing frustrations

By Billy Gunn
bgunn@thetowntalk.com

{snip} ...
However, some of the refugees and those who have helped them are frustrated with the Red Cross and its intractable bureaucracy, its tendency to look to the rule book before taking a step, whether it be registering evacuees for shelters and getting help from sorely needed volunteers.
Also, the Red Cross-mandated migrating of evacuees from small shelters to large is ripping some from the small venues where they feel safe to much larger ones where people are placed hundreds to a room with no privacy and a shortage of bathrooms.
{snip}
But the enormity of the crisis, the influx of refugees (on Saturday the number at approved Red Cross shelters in Central Louisiana was 6,000, with thousands more staying elsewhere), doesn't seem to bring a change in Red Cross procedures.

'Ridiculous'
"The Red Cross, they are ridiculous," said Tim Murry, a manager at Alexandria's Holiday Inn Convention Center, where 100 to 200 evacuees have lived since Katrina's landfall.
The hotel, like many other places with no Red Cross assistance, has sheltered and fed the southeastern Louisiana residents, or former residents, since they arrived: some yesterday, some a week ago.
Murry said he and Raj Patel, whose family owns the inn, on Friday tried to get the temporary tenants registered with the Red Cross but were met with resistance because of the emergency agency's steadfast adherence to its rules.
Before registering, the hotel would have to demand that evacuees leave, then they'd have to find a registration center and fill out a form supplied by a certified Red Cross volunteer, Murry said.
As a compromise, Murry and Patel offered to bring registration forms to the hotel and have evacuees fill them out there to keep their tenants, many of whom have not a buck for gasoline, off the road.
And, they said, the Alexandria Riverfront Center is connected to the Holiday Inn, just steps away.
The Riverfront is one of four big Red Cross shelters in Rapides Parish that continues to take on evacuees; two busloads of New Orleans evacuees arrived Friday night.
But those staying at the Holiday Inn, where in banquet rooms they've made makeshift beds out of chairs, couldn't walk up stairs and register, Murry said.
"I just said screw it. I'm keeping them," Patel said. "The important thing is that they register with FEMA."
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is a critical link to those displaced and needing federal assistance.
Evacuees at the Holiday Inn said Red Cross volunteers did come and tell them about the procedures and what the agency required.
It wasn't a good exchange, said those who've constructed boundaries where families can keep a semblance of privacy in the inn's banquet room.
The Red Cross volunteer "came barging in here and said that we're destructing the hotel," said Christina Rosa of Metairie, who didn't remember the volunteer's name. "They said the hotel does not want you."

Nice to know that the Red Cross' rules are so important in an hour of need.

There's more to the article, most importantly this information:

A volunteer
Leatha Basco also is mad at the Red Cross.
Though disabled, she thought she could do something, anything, for refugees pouring in from the southeastern part of the state.
So, she left Forest Hill Friday morning and drove to the Rapides Parish Coliseum's Exhibition Hall, one of the big-venue Red Cross shelters, the one landmark she knew how to get to.
She put in a couple of hours, cleaning the restrooms and helping by lending her cellular phones to refugees desperate to find loved ones and wanting news on their homes.
Basco then attended training, where "they said that if you can't put in eight, 12, 24 hours (at a time), they don't want you. I just got up and walked out."
"There's a lot of people out there that give a little time," she said. "I guess I'm good enough to clean the toilet but not good enough for anything else."
Murphy, the Red Cross CEO, said her manpower resources are stretched thin, and that might deviate from agency rules and let volunteers work shorter hours.
The minimum-hours rule, she said, is in place for more orderly scheduling.

There's still more at the original article.

Obviously the Red Cross is -- as noted -- stretched thin. They have people that are VOLUNTEERS that are doing these jobs. Does it excuse their lack of proper response? Ask the people that are crying because someone that was previously a Horse Judge is running FEMA in a job they seem to believe they could do better, even if they too had no prior experience in such a situation.

Should the Red Cross rules on say minimum-hours keep away people that want to help - hell no. And should their stupid rules prevent people that have been generously helped and given shelter from getting assistance without having to move to a bigger shelter that is "approved" away from one that isn't?

Again, the Red Cross is apparently operating at it's Bureaucratic best.

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There are bittle necks in relief everywhere. We must be patient. The Asian Tsunami Victims are still to get Relief in spiote of promises of help.

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I love the Red Cross, I have donated money to them (and when I'm in a position to do it again, I will again), I've served along side many Red Cross workers at disaster scenes, and I do plan on becoming a Red Cross volunteer when I am healthy enough to do it.

That being said, I also have to say that I've never seen a disaster where they didn't bring on a few of the problems they were meant to eleviate. All to often their procedures are set up to make life more convenient for the volunteers intead of the victims.

Still, with their faults and all, they are a great organization full of wonderful people who deserve our gratitude and support!

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Well, we're sitting here with housing ready for 15 refugees...and they won't send 'em. Bureaucracy and big money appear to be two of the chief reasons why. I'll be blogging more on that momentarily, so I won't steal my own thunder.

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