Teams of people with the American Red Cross in the National Capital Region are among scores of volunteers heading to Florida to help residents ahead of Hurricane Dorian.
Jackie Rivera from Virginia is traveling to West Palm Beach to set up shelters for anyone who is displaced by the storm.
“This is the beginning of a two-week deployment,” Rivera said. “We put in the beds, bring in the blankets and the pillows and we contact people who can bring in breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
She said the Red Cross is spreading out volunteers, such as herself, all along the projected path of Dorian.
“I have a friend who’s going in to Orlando and another friend who’s going in to Tallahassee,” Rivera said. “We try to get as close as we can to where the incident is going to happen.”
Along Florida’s east coast, local governments began distributing sandbags, shoppers rushed to stock up on food, plywood and other emergency supplies at supermarkets and hardware stores, and motorists topped off their tanks and filled gas cans.
Rivera said the Red Cross shelters that she will assemble will be stocked up to help people with “just about anything they need.”
“We have logistics people who bring in water, we have nurses who come in to help them if they get injured and we have counselors to come in if they need heavier counseling than I can give them,” she said.
The National Hurricane Center said the Category 2 storm is expected to strengthen into a potentially catastrophic Category 4 with winds of nearly 140 mph. It could slam into the U.S. on Tuesday almost 10 mph faster and a day later than previously forecast.
The hurricane center’s projected track showed the storm hitting near West Palm Beach. But predicting its course with any confidence this far out is so difficult that the “cone of uncertainty” on the map covered nearly Florida’s entire 500-mile coastline, with Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando all within the danger zone.
Forecasters also warned that the storm’s slow movement could subject the state to a drawn-out pummeling from wind, storm surge and heavy rain.
The Red Cross is urging everyone to donate to help with the Dorian effort.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
