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Steven Clarke (left), from the Division of Student Affairs Red Cross volunteer John Yates, of Smith Mountain Lake, stands outside the gate at the Roanoke Regional Airport yesterday. Red Cross volunteers help families of Virginia Tech students with lodging, food and other needs. |
Grieving families of the Virginia Tech shooting victims have to navigate airports, hospitals, coroner's offices, hotels and reporters.
Luis Garcia, executive director of the Rappahannock Area chapter of the American Red Cross and a Spotsylvania County resident, heads the effort to help families through the maze in Blacksburg.
"These families are so overwhelmed right now," he said yesterday.
The Red Cross set up its crisis relief center in a YMCA near the Tech campus within hours of the mass shootings Monday that took 33 lives including the shooter's. He also wounded at least 26.
Center workers and families then had to cope with a bomb scare on Tuesday, he said.
Throughout the surreal week, loved ones arrived at Tech from all over the world. With help from the Red Cross, they are finding places to stay, making arrangements to get bodies from the medical examiner or visiting injured relatives in the hospital, figuring out what to do with possessions and answering incessant calls from the media, Garcia said.
About 100 Red Cross volunteers shuttle families from the airport, find moving companies and offer grief counseling.
"This is not your traditional disaster relief operation," said Garcia, who said he's surviving on little sleep and "buckets" of Tylenol.
"These types of situations are not easy," Garcia said. "When you look at a natural disaster, people lose possessions, you lose your house, you lose your furniture. But you still have your life. This is much harder: in the blink of an eye, losing a loved one. How are you going to deal with that? That's the difference between dealing with a natural disaster and a mass casualty."
Helping the Tech community handle its grief is part of their mission.
The American Red Cross has a long history of offering mental health services, said Carolina Camargo, public support director of the Rappahannock Area Red Cross. The agency always sends mental health workers to help with disasters.
Psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses trained to deal with trauma have volunteered to help the Red Cross provide counseling.
Garcia said the American Red Cross chapters throughout the country will continue to provide counseling once the families will return home. He is working with Red Cross and Red Crescent chapters throughout the world to get the same help for the families of victims from other countries.
"Keep the workers and the families and those that have been impacted in your hearts and prayers," Garcia said.
Amy Flowers Umble: 540/735-1973
