Red Cross volunteers head west

As wildfires ripped through Southern California for the fourth straight day, volunteers from the Red Cross chapter in Rochester were being sent to San Diego.  Pam Kone and Lynn McGraw were among seven preparing to go. When News 8 Now caught up with them, they were downing coffee, getting ready for the next few weeks.

“This is our first deployment,” McGraw said.

About a million people have been displaced by wildfires. Volunteers will be working in evacuation shelters, 12 hours a day for up to three weeks.

“Our volunteers are not only there to provide with basic needs like food and shelter, but also a safe place, a place they can relax,” said Leighton Jones, the director of disaster and emergency services at the local Red Cross.

“They need the resources, and we'll be needed,” McGraw said.

This will be the largest deployment of volunteers from the American Red Cross chapter here in Rochester since last October when an ice storm hit Buffalo. But as you can imagine, the conditions in California will be much different.

“Clearly, the people who are coming to the Red Cross shelters in California have a lot of uncertainty,” Jones said. “They don't know if they have a home, and there's a lot of stress.”

But the volunteers say training from the Red Cross has prepared them and they feel compelled to go.

“You regret more what you haven't done than what you're doing, so I'm looking at it as an opportunity to help out,” McGraw said.

“This is something for someone with a lot of energy and a lot of heart,” Kone said.

And they say they’ve got it – with or without the coffee.