‘We give people hope’: Red Cross volunteer from Bend is traveling the Hurricane Helene-ravaged streets of Florida

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (KTVZ) – As he has for four years now, Bend retiree and Red Cross volunteer Dennis Smith has brought the tech knowledge gained from 18 years working in IT at St. Charles to one of the most devastated places in the country, this time assessing the Hurricane Helene-ravaged neighborhoods around Tallahassee, Florida.

Smith, 66, arrived on Thursday, a week after the second-deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland in the past-half-century roared ashore on Florida’s panhandle and sped inland, bringing torrential rain and wind, leveling homes, washing out roads and bridges and killing more than 200 people across six states.

It was also two years to the day after he arrived in Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ian, which much of the unaffected U.S. may little remember, but slammed ashore as a Category 4 storm with winds topping 155 mph and caused more than $112 billion in damage.

And now, Floridians again are making quick preparations for another major storm heading their way: fast-growing Hurricane Milton, which threatens to move across Florida in just a few days.

“We’re making all sorts of additional plans,” Smith told NewsChannel 21on Sunday. “The Red Cross is trying to get fully prepared,” aware that even more storms are forming out in the Atlantic that could pose more threats in coming days and weeks, depending on their path.

As Smith explains it, “The job that we’re doing is disaster assessment. So we are out looking at towns and going through street by street, looking through the damage on homes, capturing the data and exact addresses on a map – taking pictures, putting a narrative in.”

“It’s really used by the Red Cross so as people call and ask for services and say, ‘My home has been destroyed,’ They can look it up on a database and say, ‘Yes, we agree,’ or ‘No, it doesn’t show that.’”

“The places we’ve been working yesterday and today, all the homes that were at ground level, eight foot of water came through those homes,” Smith said. “A lot of homes are on stilts in this neighborhood, because they were prepared for it. But houses not on stilts – mobile homes and so forth -- they had water in them up to the top of their windows.”

They don’t run into a lot of residents as they travel the streets of these devastated areas, for understandable reasons.

“We haven’t seen a lot of people, but the ones we have seen are there trying to clean up their homes, making them livable,” Smith said.

Ask Smith why he does this travel-to-disaster duty at a time of life when many start to take it easy – what he gets out of it – and the answer is as familiar as it is inspiring.

“We feel good about being here to help people, We give them hope – that’s the mantra we at the Red Cross are always preaching: We give people hope.”

To learn more about what the Red Cross is doing for Hurricane Helene's victims, and how you can help, visit: https://www.redcross.org/about-us/our-work/disaster-relief/hurricane-relief/hurricane-helene.html