Red Cross looking for more volunteers in Cold Lake and area

The City of Cold Lake and FCSS is hosting a volunteer drive for the Canadian Red Cross tonight.

The Red Cross emergency management volunteer information night is at the Cold Lake Fire and Rescue from 6:30-8:00pm.

“We would love to have a wider volunteer base in Cold Lake to help out the municipality and the Fire Chief and the Mayor and FCSS and the surrounding First Nations and Indigenous communities,” said Jenn McManus, Canadian Red Cross Vice President for Alberta and Northwest Territories.

“It allows people to have the opportunity to speak to us to ask questions, find out more about what we do. And then hopefully, we can segue and help them garner the information to become a Red Cross volunteer,” she said.

In the past, there have been between 10-15 volunteers from the Cold Lake area.

Provincially, there are roughly 800 volunteers from 18-years-old to seniors, said McManus, who help out when disaster strikes.

“We have volunteers who assist community members when their lives are disrupted, either from an event that’s been man-made or a disaster that comes on from severe weather, such as flooding, or wildfire, etc. And so predominantly, our volunteers are here to help their neighbors during a time of crisis,” said McManus.

Volunteers help out in a variety of different ways beyond the boots on the ground at the point of tragedy.

“We also have volunteers that have communications backgrounds and have technical expertise, because our information management system has volunteers. We have volunteers in our philanthropy teams. We basically across our whole organization, as a Red Cross, we have volunteers in every business unit.

“We could not do the work we do across Canada and across Alberta without our volunteers.”

If you’re interested in becoming a volunteer contact Andrew Degruchy at andrew.degruchy@redcross.ca.