The government and its private sector partners are preparing for worst-case scenario relief efforts as the U.S. moves into hurricane season, especially after last year’s storms pounded Houston, Puerto Rico and the Florida Keys.
During these times and throughout the year, the American Red Cross has been a partner with the government by providing shelter, volunteers, and blood drives, filling needs that would otherwise go unmet. The organization has also taken on the cause to reduce house fires, and has historically helped military families in times of crisis.
President and CEO Gail McGovern has been overseeing these efforts for a decade, helping the organization through a changing environment in which fewer people are donating blood and as technology has transformed the way the country responds to disasters.
Washington Examiner: Most people know your organization for its work in disaster preparedness and response. What kind of work are you anticipating in the months ahead?
McGovern: Every year around this time we review our preparedness plans, and I vividly recall last year at this time going through it. Our head of disaster services and response told me that we have to be prepared for three category four hurricanes that would hit back-to-back-to-back in different parts of the country. And I thought to myself, “Well that’s not going to happen, but I think it’s great that we’re preparing for it.” And lo and behold, you know what happened.
I have good confidence that we’re prepared for this hurricane season. The way we prepare is by making sure we have warehouses pre-positioned around the country with all kinds of supplies: ready to eat meals, blankets, cots, hygiene kits, diapers, formulas. We have 50,000 volunteers who are completely trained to respond to a disaster. We can take them in very quickly, do fast background checks, get them to work quickly. We’ve got the capability of serving a million meals a day. And then we have an amazing set of partners that help us on the ground. Name a faith-based organization or an agency like the Salvation Army — they get engaged with us. We make sure we have the right partners and the right number of shelters. Schools, universities, gyms, and convention centers are all part of our shelter plan.
Washington Examiner: Can you highlight your work on one of the recent disasters, whether responding to the volcano in Hawaii or your work against wildfires?
McGovern: We’re all over the big island in Hawaii. It’s horrific, but it’s actually somewhat contained. I think the highest number that we had in the shelters was 250. It’s slow moving. People get evacuated, then they return back. We’re really fortunate. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, lives there during a big portion of the year and he generously said, “I want to help cover your expenses.” So he wrote us a wonderful check, and we’re in really good shape there.
And wildfires are all about evacuation, so people don’t live in the shelters very long, but they have to get out just in case. We have shelter plans up and down the state of California and in Denver where we follow the lead of a state government.
Washington Examiner: The Red Cross recently launched a campaign called the “Missing Type Campaign” to have more people donate blood. What can you tell us about it?
McGovern: We have some extraordinary partners that got engaged immediately. Google had us on their landing page. PayPal took out the “As” in “PayPal” and Oreo got rid of the “Os.” Facebook is engaged in it as well. Other companies like Amazon love the campaign but wanted to do it internally, and are running blood drives in their large locations for us.
It’s important because the number of new blood donors has been declining in the U.S. We provide 40 percent of the blood supply, and there are about 70 other blood bankers around the country. Our colleagues around the globe are seeing the decline in new donors as well. There are a lot of theories as to why it’s happening: People travel more these days and there are areas of the world that you are precluded from donating if you’ve visited them. A lot of people are working from home, meaning that if a corporation has a big blood drive then its employees aren’t all in the office.
The campaign is happening for 13 weeks all around the globe where people are taking the As, Bs and Os out of their logos and talking about what the world would be like if those types are missing. I would say probably everyone knows at least one person that received a blood transfusion and every two seconds someone needs a transfusion in our country. Every day, 15,000 people show up to donate blood. I only have the first week’s data because we only just finished the first week, but it’s close to a 25 percent lift in new appointments that were made. So we have our fingers crossed that it keeps going. The summer months are the toughest months for all blood bankers. The trauma accidents cause a greater need for blood, and people aren’t there to donate blood. So it’s a bad collision of two factors.
Washington Examiner: The Food and Drug Administration has come under criticism for restrictions it sets on blood donation prohibiting men who have sex with men from participating unless they have been abstinent for a year. Are you considering petitioning the FDA to change this?
McGovern: The policy originally was that they were banned for life, and we heavily lobbied the FDA and showed them scientific data that it really wasn’t necessary. There are blood tests to see whether someone is HIV-positive, so the odds of it creeping through the blood supply are not anything like they were in the 1990s when it became very, very problematic. We continue to provide evidence because, frankly, we would like to see the ban lifted. However, I am very sympathetic to their stance. They are ultra-conservative and they need to be. I mean, they are protecting the nation against all kinds of things — food and drugs — and blood is a biologic, and you’ve got to make sure the quality of the blood product is as good as it possibly can be. So I understand the conservatism and the concern about changing the restriction. Frankly, I’m just thrilled that they lifted the lifetime ban and reduced it. I would like to see them move further, but I am totally appreciative of the fact that they really monitor all of this. They have a big role and they are a reasonably conservative, I think.
Washington Examiner: Your organization is also involved in protecting homes against fires. How do you do that?
McGovern: People know we respond to big disasters because we’re all over the news along with everybody else, but we respond to 64,000 disasters a year, and most of them are home fires caused because of cooking accidents. People call them small disasters, but if you’re a victim of one it’s not small. There are 2,500 deaths every year from home fires — significantly higher than any natural disaster. These are preventable deaths and there are about 13,000 injuries. They’re preventable if people do just two things: Have an evacuation plan to get out in two minutes and having a working smoke alarm. A distressing number of people cannot afford smoke alarms; there are other essentials that they need before the smoke alarm. So we thought, “OK, we’re going to go out into neighborhoods, vulnerable communities that are prone to home fires, and we’re going to start installing them.” We carry stepladders, a drill, and alarms and we go home to home. Having been on these installations, it’s an amazing thing. People just open up their doors. They see that Red Cross T-shirt or the Red Cross vest. We are doing this in conjunction lots of times with the police department and with the fire department. No one thinks it’s going to happen to them. We did a survey and found more people think they’re going to win the lottery or get struck by lightning before they’re going to have a home fire. And they’re not that uncommon. Since we’ve started this campaign, we’ve saved 444 lives.
Washington Examiner: What role does your organization fill that the government does not?
McGovern: There’s something called the National Service Framework that goes through who does what in every single stage of a disaster, and it starts with the Department of Defense, who’s doing search and rescue, and the Department of Energy that gets the lights back on. Among the roles is mass care and feeding, and we co-own that with FEMA. When disasters strike we’re responsible for setting up the shelters, having the supplies in the shelters, making sure that we have enough food to be able to house people. The relationship that we have with FEMA is phenomenal. We are just working side-by-side with them, and we couldn’t do what we do without them and they couldn’t do what they do without us.
The other area where we get involved is with the military. We receive about 420,000 calls a year from active service members, their families and veterans. We respond to emergency calls and will arrange for transportation or funeral arrangements. We’ll do what it takes to get that service member home. We can do that usually within 24 to 48 hours. Veterans will also call us when they can’t make their mortgage payment. In that case, we convene all the agencies that help veterans and we’ll get them financial assistance, we’ll get them into a homeless shelter, we’ll take care of them. This is something that we contract with the Department of Defense because we can honestly do it faster and more efficiently because we have boots on the ground in 3,000 counties across the country.
Washington Examiner: What are the biggest concerns you have when it comes to the United States’ ability to handle these types of crises?
McGovern: I really think, all things considered, that we’re in a good state. The unthinkable can happen, there’s no doubt about it. You can’t be ready for everything, but we’re pretty close. When I say we, I’m including government, I’m including us, including all the players. We seem to get better after every disaster. Our IT is so much better. When I first got here we would send volunteers out with clipboards going up and down the streets to figure out which homes were damaged. Now we have geospatial technology. We have drones from UPS. We do things faster and better. Same thing with FEMA. I mean it used to take a long time to get that FEMA check and now boom, you register with the tablet and it goes into your bank account.
Washington Examiner: For example, there has been some criticism about relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the fact that the island is still trying to recover.
McGovern: It’s difficult there, there’s no doubt about it. If you asked me what I would do if I had a magic wand, and I can do one thing, it would be to get them a really good power grid. It’s really difficult because the power goes on and off and that’s the biggest issue. That’s what keeps the schools open and that’s what keeps the water clean. But everybody’s doing good work there. At the Red Cross we’re looking at putting up solar panels on schools so that they have electricity. We’re looking at helping with micro loans to people in the agricultural sector, which is a big part of their economy. We’re looking at wellness, particularly mental health centers, that we can put in schools. We’re all doing a lot of work, but the storm destroyed a lot of the island and it’s going to take time.
Washington Examiner: The Red Cross came under scrutiny earlier this year for its handling of a sexual harassment case of one of its top employees. What changes have you made to prevent this from happening again?
McGovern: The incident happened in 2010. It wasn’t brought to anyone’s attention at all until 2012. We swiftly did an investigation. It took about a month, and the person in question was asked to leave. We thought we were done with it. The young woman went to the press and I have complete sympathy for that. I think the #MeToo movement got a lot of women thinking about things that they had experienced, and so she went to the press and that’s when it was reported. But the incident itself happened in 2010 and I think we did all the right things. It was unquestionable that he needed to leave and he was asked to leave. We did [more training] when the #MeToo movement started. We said, “You know what? We all could use a refresher on this. The policies are very clear.” We had given training, but we said, “Let’s do a bigger, full-court press on this because it’s important and people need to feel safe.” We have three mandatory trainings: workplace harassment, diversity inclusion and ethics. We make sure every employee is exposed to those three things, and no one complains about the mandatory nature of it because they understand that we want people to think the American Red Cross is the best place in the world to work or volunteer.
Washington Examiner: You are celebrating 10 years at this organization. What would you say during that time has been one of the biggest lessons that you have taken away?
McGovern: I was attracted to work here because I wanted to give back, and I remember when I started we had challenges and I thought, “Well, if I could just bring what I learned in the for-profit world here, and make it even a little bit better, that would be an accomplishment because it’s such a beautiful institution with such a storied history.” But when I first walked in the door, in my brain it was all about material logistics: How do you get the supplies from here to there? How do you get the blood from here to there? The business side of my brain was sort of approaching this like, “We’ve got to be more efficient, we’ve got to be more effective. We have to find ways to do things more efficiently so that we can reduce our costs.”
Lessons learned? Three weeks after I was here I was asked to join a contingent that was going to China because there was a horrific earthquake. Up until that point, I had never been at a disaster site. We come around a corner, half of a mountain is gone. I can’t even capture in words the destruction that we saw. A little 7-year-old girl through an interpreter was telling us what happened. As she was talking, we realized that the rubble she was standing in front of was her school, and 200 kids were buried alive in that school. And that was it for me. It is not a material logistics problem. It is not an efficiency problem. It is helping people in their darkest hours get through horrific circumstances. And once I had that in my head and in my heart, it became easier to lead. And it became really easy to make good decisions. Because you just look at everything through the lens of our mission and you just innately know what the right thing to do is. So I guess my biggest lesson in a sentence was: I used to lead just with my head. Now I try to lead with my head and my heart.
