When disaster strikes, John Decker is not far behind.
The Northern Minnesota Region Red Cross volunteer has seen his share of destruction. From the horrific scene of the Joplin tornado to communities washed away by Hurricane Irene, Decker has been there to offer his assistance.
And now, he's helping out at home.
While recent flooding events have caused no loss of life and buildings are still standing, Decker said he and other Red Cross volunteers treat this local disaster like any other.
“Every disaster is the same whether it's a total devastation or it's this frustrating flood that creeps up on your house day by day,” he said. “Someone whose house has two inches of water in it, to them, that disaster is as big as the person who lost their house in Joplin. We always have to remember disaster is as bad to them as another disaster. This is their everything they could be losing.”
For the past two and a half weeks, Decker has been logging some long days. The co-owner of Decker's Family Care has been spending about 17 hours each day as a Red Cross responder only to come home, catch up on his business and family for a few hours, and then do it all again the next day.
“I learned right away (from this disaster), that it's almost more stressful when it's at home,” he said.
Fortunately, Decker has no personal property impacted by Rainy Lake's rising waters, but he is still feeling a loss.
“I don't have a personal loss, but I have a community-felt loss that I bring home every night,” the Falls native said. “It is definitely more stressful and tiring when it's in your home area.”
Still, Decker said he's not slowing down until the end.
“We're in this for the long haul,” he said. “We will be here helping until the end.”
Calling in help
It's been almost three weeks since June 12 when Decker reported to City Beach in the pouring rain with a handful of other volunteers to offer his help filling sandbags.
The next day, Koochiching County Sheriff Brian Jespersen approached Decker with questions about how to call in the Red Cross – should matters get worse, which they quickly did.
“I told him he just needs to give me the word and we're here,” Decker said of a Red Cross team. “The next day, we had a team in place in town and up and running.”
Since then, Red Cross responders have been working with county staff and delivering food to those in need – some in remote locations.
“Getting to some people in remote locations has definitely been a challenge,” Decker said.
While food service is only a small slice of the pie in what Red Cross does, Decker explained, The Salvation Army has been a close partner along the way.
“The importance (of food service) depends on the situation and we couldn't have done it without The Salvation Army,” he said.
Other components
In the last three weeks, Red Cross volunteers have also been assisting county staff in relief efforts.
“We are a small team of nine, but we have many areas of specialties,” Decker said of the Red Cross.
One person's duties involve communications reporting in almost “real time” with offices at the local level in St. Paul as well as the national level, he said.
In addition, disaster assessment teams have been working closely with the county assessor documenting damage to homes and coming up with a count of how many properties were impacted and to what degree.
“It helps the county as well as our organization prepare for how many people we may need to shelter and provide food for,” Decker said.
Right now, he said teams are gearing up to help in mental health areas.
“A big part of Red Cross is treating the response at the beginning as important as the recovery phase at the end of a disaster,” Decker said, noting public and mental health are key components to a recovery phase.
“We go through different phases of a disaster – from the honeymoon phase when we're all panicked and helping each other to now when we're fatigued,” he said. “Some people have lost a lot, others haven't had any big losses yet. This is a marathon, not a sprint. It's harder on people to sit and watch the water creep in on them every day. They start to feel helpless.”
'Amazing' effort
Decker said he has seen a lot of devastation in his four years with the Red Cross and watching communities pull together in a time of crisis never ceases to amaze him.
Borderland is no different.
“This is amazing,” he said of watching the community react. “One day we had more than 950 volunteers come through to help sandbag and most of them have no vested interest in this other than they want to help someone in the community they don't know.”
And, he gave a nod to efforts by emergency managers and department heads for pulling together, even though some had never experienced something like this before.
“Everything just came together,” Decker said. “We don't have tremendous loss right now because of the things everyone did as a team that first week. Otherwise, there could have been more total loss out there.”
