Bernadine Healy: There were three sites attacked and the American Red Cross immediately went to work at each site. In Pennsylvania, we sent in our air team. We also sent teams to the Pentagon. In New York, the head of disaster [response] for the New York City chapter was there meeting with the city management team–they meet regularly–at the time that this happened. She was there at the site working immediately. But this is typical of the Red Cross. We’re in every community. We respond immediately, that’s what we do.
In terms of disasters on our homeland, this is unequivocally the worst we have ever seen. The Great Storm in [Galveston, Texas] in 1900 had been the worst–the whole city was washed out. It was [Red Cross founder] Clara Barton’s last mission. In her journal, she describes horrific scenes, like scenes from Dante’s “Inferno.” When I went to ground zero two days after the attacks, all I could think about was what she had written. I thought, this is worse than what Clara Barton saw. I had read a lot of her writings and her diary from that time, and I had always said to myself, “We’ll never face something that hideous.” And barely two years into my job, our organization, our society and our country has faced something much, much worse. And in Galveston, the storms receded and there was no more threat. But here, every single person in America recognizes that there is a threat that they face. It is our problem. America is grieving. America is in mourning, and it is not going to go away.
We’ve mobilized 25,000 volunteers, served thousands of meals, sheltered over 7,000 people, made more than 40,000 interchanges with spiritual or crisis counseling. We have extensive volunteer and staff involvement at [New York’s] Pier 94 and, previously, at the Armory, with a daycare area, a grieving wall that’s been set up, a quiet, comfy lounge and a dining area for families and for rescue workers. There’s also a respite center at ground zero where we care for firefighters and police who are still valiantly working … We’ve also expanded our efforts by adding a major gift program for immediate relief to victims.
In most disasters, the home is hurt or destroyed, but the family is intact. Here the homes are fine, the cars are there and the bills are there. But the backbone of the family is gone. It’s very hard to grieve, very hard to get through this time. It’s even worse when there’s no paycheck coming in, and life insurance hasn’t kicked in yet, but the bills are still due. With the gift program, victims fill out one sheet of paper and present minimal documentation like a death certificate. We ask four questions: What is the size of your family? What is your monthly rent or mortgage payment? What funeral expenses are not covered? And what other expenses are you facing immediately? It’s a gift program, and it’s based on their assessment of their own needs. They can ask for anything up to $30,000, and we can process it in 24 hours. Also, blood inventories have tripled and we’re maintaining them at a higher level than normal peacetime levels. We also have to be prepared and are obliged to prepare for any needs the military might have to supplement the military supplies.
We have 25,000 volunteers and at least 15,000 to 20,000 staff involved nationally in some part of the response effort.
We go after them. We went down the list of every single company located in the World Trade Center. We literally started at the top with Windows of the World, and directly made personal phone calls–I made some myself–to the CEOs or whomever we could reach and faxed them the materials about our programs. We said to them, “Please, get this information to the people in your company. You just need to certify that they were your employees and they’re missing, and we can give them the money.” These are people who probably never imagined they’d ever have to ask for help.
We do not provide information on any people we serve–not their names nor the services rendered. That’s a privileged relationship between an individual and someone who comes to us in need. We never shared that information. We will not share it now, and we don’t plan to do so in the future. These aren’t beggars or people angling for a handout. These are people who find themselves in an unexpected, desperate situation. You do everything you can to help restore their dignity. That’s the guts of America, the soul of America. This is not about creating a class of welfare individuals who need to be scrutinized, interrogated or looked upon or someone who’s at risk for double dipping. If they want to give that information to the database set up by a government agency and they sign a release asking us to do it, that is their call. We will not provide that information. If we did, I believe that the trust and faith the American Red Cross has built up over the years would be tarnished.
I met personally with Attorney General Spitzer. I was very impressed with him, but this is just something we couldn’t do. I agree though that you need to have a disclosure of what various [charitable] enterprises are doing and make sure no need goes unfilled. If there are redundancies and overlaps that seem inappropriate, you should sit down and talk about them.
Pledges have reached between $260 million and $270 million. We estimate the costs of the grant program and immediate needs at about the same amount. And we’re probably looking for another $250 million for the more long-term issues.
We identified the immediate financial need for these families early on as enormous. We committed $100 million before we had it. But I believed we could raise that amount of money, and we have. When there’s a disaster, we respond. It doesn’t matter if we don’t have five cents in the bank because we know the American public always steps forward. I think we have good credit with the American people. We’re just about approaching the amount needed for immediate costs, but we need to continue to bring in resources for longer-term needs. I’m confident that will happen.
For years, easily. We’re still working with people from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. We stick with the people who come to us. We have case workers assigned to people. There’s always a big surge at the beginning, but it trails off. Still, as long as people want us, we’re there for them.
This is not your garden-variety disaster. With most disasters, you have a beginning and an end point, and you can project about what the cost will be. With this, that did not apply. Every force we have was activated, even international chapters. So, we’ve developed the Liberty Fund specifically for this disaster because it is so different. It cannot be touched by anything else, and it won’t be commingled with other funds. Also, we feel because of the magnitude of this response, we have an obligation to be absolutely transparent. We even had auditors in. For a designated period of time, all the donations will go to the Liberty Fund unless the donor says otherwise.
