© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Kansas Red Cross Volunteers Head To East Coast To Help With Hurricane Relief

Daniel Cima/American Red Cross Facebook
A Red Cross volunteer in Georgia assists a man whose house was hit by a tree in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew.

Local volunteers from the Red Cross are answering the call to help people across four states who were affected by Hurricane Matthew.

As of Monday morning, 37 volunteers from the Kansas, Nebraska, and southwest Iowa region were heading the East coast to provide assistance. Ten of the 37 are from the South Central and Southeast Kansas Chapter.

The responders will be working to help distribute relief supplies and health services, among other things.

The storm has also impacted the nation’s blood supply. So far, Hurricane Matthew has forced the cancellation of approximately 40 Red Cross blood drives in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia resulting in more than 1,500 blood and platelet donations going uncollected.

The need for platelets is especially critical due to the loss of these donations in affected areas. Platelets, a key clotting component of blood often needed by cancer patients, must be transfused within five days of donation and, therefore, are always in demand.

--

Follow Nadya Faulx on Twitter @NadyaFaulx.

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.