Local volunteer meets up with Isaac

Regina Crandall changes with the weather – literally.

The Maricopa resident has been following Isaac since last Friday when she was deployed to Florida by the Grand Canyon Chapter of the American Red Cross as the storm morphed from tropical to hurricane and back to tropical.

Crandall is part of a disaster assessment team.

“Once there’s a disaster of any type, a team goes in and reports the damage to various government authorities,” she said.

The disaster assessment team is usually “the first function on the ground” when there’s a disaster, Crandall said, because members help determine what additional aid is needed and how it is given.

The team does exactly what its name says. It goes through an area thoroughly and assesses how much damage there is using a ranking system for the structure damage ranging from “nonvisible” to “destroyed.”

“We go up and down every single street, whether it’s on a map or not,” Crandall said. “And we look at the residents and see … maybe there’s a roof blown off or something.”

“And it’s very quick because we have to get that information to governmental officials,” Crandall said, pointing out that could be anyone from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the National Guard.

The information gathered by Crandall and her team is used by the Red Cross to determine if and where shelters need to be opened and what other supplies or assistance is needed.

Crandall said the team began in the Florida panhandle and had been traveling throughout the state.

“We covered the whole gamut of weather on the way here,” she said Wednesday evening from Pensacola.

Nature changes quickly, and so can Crandall and her team’s priorities.

Isaac skirted Florida, ultimately making landfall Wednesday as a category 1 hurricane in Louisiana, according to the National Weather Service.

Although not as severe as Hurricane Katrina was seven years ago, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi are experiencing heavy flooding. 

Crandall said she’d seen “intense flooding, intense winds and tornado damage.”

Crandall, who has taken a variety of courses offered by the Red Cross for its volunteers, also is able to act as a caseworker.

She’s able to “help those people we’ve identified as needing help.”