How to Offer Work-Related Disaster Relief

A disaster has occurred. Your job requires you to be a part of the relief effort. Your family and home have survived with minimal damage. You must leave your family to serve.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Leaving your family in the middle of a disaster is one of the most difficult things to do. Make sure you have a family plan if there should be further repercussions. This plan should include a meeting place and someone outside the area with telephone service who can help you find each other. Hopefully you have planned ahead, and you have plenty of water and food, temporary shelter and clothes.
2. With your family taken care of, you can more readily deal with work. If you are required to work with victims of the disaster, this will be an emotionally difficult job. Be prepared to share tears and hugs as well as assistance.
3. Sometimes your work will take you to a different part of the county and, in some jobs, a different area altogether. Staying in touch with family may be impossible, but write every night or day, even if you will have to hand them to your family when you return.
4. Do the job you are told to do. For some, their duties may be far removed from the work they usually do. Perhaps you are usually a paper pusher, but now you are pushing a broom and using a shovel to clear mud out of a person's home. Do not complain. Do your job and make the best of it. If you can bring a bit of laughter to the situation, do. The homeowner will need relief and will remember you forever for selflessly leaving your own family to help out.

Tips & Warnings

• Most often you are paid for your work. You will be surrounded by good people who are volunteering their time without expecting compensation. Keep your pay status to yourself.
• Disaster relief sites are often filled with confusion. Rules and regulations may have been changed to allow more people to qualify. There will be questions flying around. As much as possible, try to create the feeling that you know what you are doing, even if you really are not sure.
• People will come to you with questions about where they need to go to get this or that. Try to get a feel for where they are giving out various items so you can point people in the right direction. For instance, one church may be providing hot meals and another blankets, and the Red Cross may be filling out applications for disaster relief. If you are a paid relief worker, you should make it your business to know where all these services are located and who is doing what so you can be of help.