LDS, Red Cross sending aid

Utahns with relatives living in the path of Hurricane Frances should call them before the storm hits this afternoon to arrange for emergency contact later.

That's the word from Utah's chapters of the American Red Cross.

Also, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent 100,000 hygiene kits by truck to Florida Friday, and they should arrive by late Sunday or early Monday. These all came from the church's Humanitarian Center and will supplement what relief is already in place there.

In all, nationally, the Red Cross is gearing up to send more than 1,800 trained volunteers into the area that was just beginning to pick up the pieces from Hurricane Charley. Some of those volunteers are from Utah.

"The message right now is to contact family and friends and get things situated so you know where they are going to be, where they're traveling to and their evacuation plans," said Leslie Schaffer, spokeswoman for the Salt Lake area office. "The next message is, we're deploying trained Red Cross volunteers who have gone through some fairly time-consuming training and are ready to go help with the efforts."

The national office of the organization is coordinating the deployments, telling local chapters what it needs, she said. It's a massive effort that won't accept walk-in volunteers because the need is for those already trained for large-scale aid operations.

It comes at a time when many Red Cross volunteers — including six Utahns — were just beginning to return from helping with Charley. Typically, people are deployed for about three weeks.

While the American Red Cross can always use cash donations — and needs them — to sustain its emergency relief efforts, they're asking people not to organize food drives and clothing drives unless they've already hooked up with someone in Florida willing to take on the task of delivering and sorting. "The infrastructure in an area that is devastated is also devastated. There's no way to intercept, organize and get it out in a fair and equitable manner."

The exception is organizations that have a system in place that the Red Cross can work with on necessary in-kind gifts. The LDS Church, for instance, has been generous in relief efforts and has the infrastructure and scale to make it happen, Schaffer said. Besides donating tangible goods, the church recently sent seven mental health counselors to Florida to help with recovery.

And there's another reason the clothes drives don't work: "Part of the recovery process is to provide some new stuff for people to start over. From a psychological standpoint, that's important," she said.