SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As people evacuate parts of Florida, dozens of local volunteers and crews from Northern California are standing by to lend a helping hand.
The American Red Cross and PG&E already have boots on the ground for Hurricane Helene and are preparing for Hurricane Milton as well.
Local volunteers with the American Red Cross are bracing for the worst as Hurricane Milton makes its way to Florida.
"Fortunately, we had people on the ground ahead of Helene when it hit, so we were ready to receive people into our shelters. It is complicating when now there's another storm right on Helene's heels that's coming down," said Steve Walsh, an American Red Cross spokesperson.
Walsh arrived in Macon, Georgia, Tuesday morning to respond to both hurricanes after assisting in North Carolina last week. He's based in Sacramento, but he deployed to the Southern states facing the wreckage.
In North Carolina, he said he witnessed downed power lines, blocked roads and areas that were not accessible.
He said across the country about 2,000 volunteers have deployed to states such as Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.
Forty of them are from the Sacramento area and other counties in Northern California, but they are in dire need of more.
"The Red Cross has an emergency appeal out for shelter workers, and essentially, what that means is — even if it's something you've never considered or never done — if you go to redcross.org and indicate that you want to volunteer, we will provide the training quickly and then it's very likely that you could be on an airplane within 24 hours of completing the online training," Walsh said.
Volunteers deploy for two weeks at a time and take on jobs from working in the shelters to communications and logistics.
PG&E crews are also on standby during the storm.
After a weekend in Georgia, about 400 local PG&E electrical workers, support staff and more than 300 vehicles are heading to Daytona Beach in Florida.
PG&E said they'll be in position to provide restoration help once it is safe to do so.
Walsh said the help doesn't stop there. Once a volunteer's time is up, they will need more people to fill those roles.
"Our primary function during a disaster like this is sheltering, because we want to make sure that people have a safe place to be and food and a place to sleep and access to resources, things like that. We are also out in the field... delivering meals, delivering supplies to people in places that we could reach and that will be going on for quite some time," Walsh said.
The Red Cross said the biggest needs from the public include volunteering, financial donations and blood donations because much of the blood supply from our area was already shipped to the Southern states ahead of the storm.
If you are having trouble locating someone in the impacted areas of the hurricanes, you can call the Red Cross at 1-800-Red-Cross.
