Pete Suarez from the American Red Cross Miami and South Florida joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about the holidays.
Hazards can happen during Thanksgiving.
Suarez said, “One of the things that we do at the Red Cross is we respond to home fires and help people out after the sad event. Almost half of the fires at home that happen are cooking fires. A lot of them happen during Thanksgiving. So we’ve developed a small list of cooking safety tips, like, for example, staying in the kitchen when you’re frying or when you’re grilling. Use a timer to remind yourself when your stuff’s done. You can keep the kids and the pets away from the kitchen and keep anything that can catch on fire away from the flame, like pot holders or mitts or wooden utensils, plastic bags, food packaging, things like that. Keep the cooking surfaces clean, and consider purchasing a fire extinguisher to keep in your kitchen. If you can’t have a fire extinguisher, maybe a little baking soda. Keep it nearby, keep it in the refrigerator, and then it could be very helpful to put out grease fires. And last but not least, check the kitchen, check the stove before going to bed. Sometimes people leave it on and then something happens, even if it isn’t electric, a bug could walk across the hot surfaces, catch on fire and we have a disaster.”
Donations to the Red Cross are always helpful.
Suarez said, “There’s three things that we appreciate a lot the Red Cross. One, of course, is the cash donations and money donations, especially before the end of the year, you can get in under the wire for next year’s tax man, actually, and another thing you can do is volunteer your time. We need volunteers. 90% of our workforce consists of volunteers. You can’t just walk into a shelter, for example, and say, I want to help. We have trained volunteers. We have to qualify you. We have to put you through the paces so that you would know how to handle yourselves and how to help other people inside a shelter. That’s one of the most important things we do. Also blood donations. We do that through a partner in Florida called One Blood. You may have seen them around with a big red busses. We don’t take the blood ourselves, but that’s something that cannot be manufactured. It has to come from generous individuals. So donations, time and some blood, it’s always helpful, and we are here to share that with the rest of the folks who will share your time and efforts with the community. That is a way of helping the community. That is a way of building it up.”
All of the information can be found on the website.
Suarez said, “You fill out all the information. And you’ll be submitted. It gets back to the proper chapter, to the proper area, and then you get interviewed, you get on boarded, there is a little bit of security check, and that’s it. Then you take some courses online that are real easy. We do need people to answer to home fires. It’s a department called disaster action teams, and we always need people for training for shelter work. Sometimes that shelter work happens locally, but most of the time it happens away from your home. It happens upstate, or it even happened anywhere in the country. There are people now probably going to shelters in Texas. There were some problems there yesterday with some tornadoes, and I know there’s a shelter going up near Syracuse. So in any event, the training is important. In the spirit of giving, not just giving donations, give us some of your time and train with the Red Cross. You can learn CPR. You can learn a whole bunch of things that will be helpful to you and your family, your neighbors, your community, your church, whatever group you belong to. It’s a good place to start with the American Red Cross.”
For more information, click here: https://www.redcross.org/local/florida/south-florida.html