Husband and wife team-up to respond to storms far from home

By EILENE E. GUY, American Red Cross volunteer

Jeff and Laura Mann were on what you would call a “mission of mercy” when I reached them by phone, headed for the hospital in flood-ravaged Asheville, N.C., to pick up specialized medical equipment for a baby in an American Red Cross shelter in Burnsville, another hour away.

The couple are what the Red Cross calls a “fulfillment team.” Jeff says they’re “a store on wheels.”

They deliver consumables like toilet tissue, paper towels and baby formula as well as essentials like pillows, blankets, and special need items to shelters in northwestern North Carolina, where the number of storm refugees continued to grow.

When we talked, a week after Hurricane Helene swept from the Gulf to the East Coast, the Manns were still seeing helicopters – some ferrying evacuees to shelters and others airlifting food and water to isolated communities.

Jeff, a retired YMCA executive director, is a veteran disaster responder. “This is my 15^th, 16^th (response) – I don’t know,” he told me with a chuckle. He’s served in evacuation shelters, warehouses, supply units. “I’m quite a rover… wherever I’m needed.”

Laura, on the other hand, is on her first deployment. She’s been on the board of the Heartland, Stark, Muskingum Lakes chapter of the Red Cross for years and taken lots of disaster response training. But this is the first time her work as a CPA has allowed her to take off for two weeks.

She’s excited to be helping bring relief to a region devastated by hurricane winds and unprecedented flooding. It’s a plus that she’s working with her husband.

“Laura and I are bonding,” Jeff offered. “It’s our 39^th anniversary this week,” Laura explained. “This is a good marriage test.” They both laughed comfortably.

The couple, who call Louisville, Ohio, in Stark County home, are finding conditions in mountainous North Carolina challenging. Many roads, even if passable, are one lane where downed trees have been hacked back just enough so Jeff can squeeze his box truck through. Cell phone service and GPS are spotty.

“We were headed for the hospital in Asheville the first time and GPS died at the edge of town,” Laura recalled. “There were no streetlights and we didn’t have a clue. We just had to figure it out.”

A typical day has them at a Red Cross warehouse in Greenville, S.C., at 7 in the morning to load up, with a list of special orders to be picked up at local big-box stores. Then they head north to Asheville and on to shelters as far as Boone, another two hours away.

“We go up one side of the (Blue Ridge) mountains and back down the other,” Laura said. They were still in the truck, on the way back to Greenville, when we chatted at 9 o’clock in the evening last week.   

The Manns are among the more than 2,000 trained Red Cross disaster responders providing shelter, food, emotional support, replacement medical devices and prescriptions, and other urgent needs to storm victims across five states. At the same time, some 200 Red Cross reunification staff have fielded thousands of requests for help locating loved ones.

Red Crossers and our partners have given out nearly 480,000 meals and snacks in shelters and from mobile feeding trucks. With partner organizations, they’ve provided more than 35,000 overnight stays.

None of this disaster response, which will go on for months as the Red Cross helps individuals and families plan the next steps in their recovery, would be possible without the generosity of the American people. Please consider making a financial donation by going to redcross.org, calling 1-800-RED-CROSS.

If you’d like to get trained and become part of the hands-on relief effort, as Jeff and Laura Mann are doing, visit NEOvolunteer@redcross.org or call 216-431-3328 to learn about all the different roles that might interest you.