DENVER -- Days before Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, volunteers from Colorado were on the ground ready to help out.
“We started sending volunteers three days before the storm,” Bill Fortune of the American Red Cross told Nicole Brady on this weekend’s Politics Unplugged. “You want to make sure you have all the pieces in the right place. You’ve got your volunteers there or en route. Actually, at one time Colorado volunteers were 20-percent of the volunteer force down in Houston during the first landfall.”
A Colorado fundraiser for the Red Cross raised over a half million dollars on Wednesday alone. Right now, Red Cross funds are going to help with immediate needs like shelter, medical care and lost medication. But as the recovery phase evolves, the ways the Red Cross helps will change as well.
“We’ll be working with local organizations and local governments to start building on the recovery process,” Fortune said. “We’ll be using funds we already had for our initial push and that’s why we want people to consider donating to the Red Cross on a regular basis. Because when a disaster happens we have to move in regardless of whether people are going to done to us, it’s our job to get in there.”
Politics Unplugged airs Sundays at 4:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Denver7.
