Disaster Services The principle role of the Red Cross in disasters is immediate and long-term help for victims. Immediate emergency help consists of providing food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Long-term aid, which accounts for about 75 cents of the Red Cross disaster dollar, means rebuilding and repairing homes; providing new home furnishings; replacing destroyed farm supplies—equipment, livestock, and poultry; and providing maintenance, extended medical care, and sometimes, training for a new job. A marathon blizzard gripping nearly a quarter of the country for 2 months provided last year’s most spectacular test of Red Cross flexibility in disaster work. Throughout January a series of snowstorms piled drifts as high as 20 feet across 7 Plains states. Rail and auto routes were blocked. The only way to reach many isolated areas was by air. So the Red Cross took to the air. Operating closely with army relief forces from joint headquarters in Omaha, the Red Cross sent out small planes on mercy missions made extremely hazardous by snow, ice, and high wind. In the four states of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming, 197 planes, mostly Civil Air Patrol, flew 3,566 Red Cross-chartered missions in bringing help to approximately 31,000 persons in remote snowbound areas. Medicines, food, fuel, and clothing were dropped from the air or delivered in ski planes. More than 300 persons, a number of them expectant mothers, were evacuated by plane to hospitals. Doctors were flown to patients who could not be moved. On May 17 a violent cloudburst caused the worst flood in the history of Fort Worth, Tex. Approximately 4,000 families suffered loss. The first night the waters gushed through the city, the local Red Cross chapter hustled 2,400 people into nine temporary shelters. For 4 days following the fort Worth cloudburst, a series of floods and tornadoes hit northward into Oklahoma, causing losses to 2,949 families. On May 19, at Guthrie, Okla., Cottonwood Creek suddenly burst from its banks, flooding the western half of the community. So fast did the torrent burst through the town that a thousand persons literally fled for their lives, many of them clambering into treetops. To help in their rescue, the Oklahoma City Red Cross Chapter dispatched several boats, a loudspeaker, and a powerful searchlight. While the searchlight played through the treetops, aiding rescue work, words of assurance and encouragement from the loudspeaker helped keep up the courage of those waiting to be rescued. From a purely humanitarian standpoint, perhaps one of the greatest Red Cross efforts of the last year was the help given approximately 10,000 Navajo and Hopi Indians on their Arizona-New Mexico-Utah reservation. 7