Area Red Cross prepares for possibility of emergency shelters

With voluntary evacuations already underway in Allenville and floodwaters expected to increase all week, the Red Cross is making sure it's ready for the possible need for emergency shelters.

Sara Gerau, executive director of the Southeast Missouri chapter of the Red Cross, said the organization maintains a high level of preparedness but has made sure to keep lines of communication open in light of the coming flood event.

"We have met with and talked to shelters on standby, emergency managers, trying to determine what to do if the need arises," she said. "Right now, they're doing voluntary evacuations. Usually when we step in there is when there's mandated evacuations."

She said there are places earmarked and protocols in place to help erect shelters as fast as possible.

"Often, we work with churches to help coordinate, but that's one of the great things about all the partnerships we have with the ministerial alliance or the Salvation Army," she said. "In Poplar Bluff, the Black River Coliseum opened on Easter Sunday (in 2011)."

Hundreds were served there over the course of that weeks-long flood, and it closed just days before Red Cross resources were needed elsewhere in the wake of the Joplin tornado.

"The great thing is that we have such amazing volunteers ready to step up," she said. She said what many people need, just as much as physical shelter, is emotional respite.

"They provide emotional support, too, keep the kids busy while the parents try to figure out the next step kind of thing," she said. "We have resources and information about those next steps in case they've never experienced this type of a situation before."

Richard Knaup, director of emergency management in Cape Girardeau County, is the person who gives the green light to the Red Cross to set up shelters once the need arises.

"Both us and the sheriff's department have boots on the ground in Allenville," Knaup said. "They've been going door-to-door since sunup, advising people that it would be very smart to evacuate."

While many are evacuating, Knaup said, "90 percent of those people have family or friends to go and live with in that area."

For the other 10 percent of people, he said, the Red Cross has small-scale avenues of providing shelter.

"If we get into the 15 to 20 people headcount, we can get a shelter up almost immediately," he said.

"The next 24 hours in the southern part of the state or anywhere there's a creek is going to be very dangerous," he said. "Don't think you could make it [through water that covers a roadway]; too many people died already because they thought that."

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3627