Louisiana, Katrina & the Red Cross, Page 7
Saturday, October 1, 2005
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We arrived at the Alexandria Red Cross Chapter Office at 6:00AM. At our briefing we were introduced to the filling system we had sorted previously, and given instructions on how to distribute cards. We had two teams that spelled each other every 2 - 3 hours. Each team was divided into window, name look up & outdoor crews. At the start the outdoor crew collected names from the clients in line, called them into the look up crews inside over walkie talkies, and the cards pulled & passed to the window workers. The walkie talkies didn't work - hard to hear & names we didn't know how to spell but writing the name & address on paper, passing it through the windows to the look up crews worked well.

Working the Window	Looking up Cards	Water & Snacks for Clients

Although the set up wasn't ideal for the large number of clients in line, it worked & we handed out well over 150 cards by the end of the day. That evening I had a chance to try some of the left over pulled pork & beans from yesterday. Excellent! Also had some cake & ice cream left over from a chapter worker's birthday. There is always something to drink & something to eat. Often it is snack food - Little Debbie dropped off a tractor trailer load of their stuff, so you may have to live with a continuous sugar high, but you won't go hungry. There is even fresh fruit most of the time.

A long day - good to get back to Tall Timbers by 9:00.

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