Two years after severe flooding damaged thousands of properties across southern Alberta, the repairs on Chuck Shifflett’s historic High River home are nearly complete. But, like many in the hardest hit regions, Shifflett and his neighbours are still recovering from the disaster. Down his street, four homes were eventually torn down, and just two were rebuilt so far.
The Canadian Red Cross continues to offer a range of programs and services to people affected by the floods in 2013. This includes Red Cross funding for Samaritan’s Purse, Habitat for Humanity, Mennonite Disaster Services and World Renew to help dozens of families in High River and the Calgary area as they rebuild or repair their homes.
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On a misty, pre-monsoon morning at the Canadian Red Cross field hospital, a colourful line-up is forming of elderly Nepalese women in traditional embroideries and heavy brass earrings, crying children, and a few proud, wiry men.
In a half-constructed classroom open to the sky, about 65 Nepalese students laugh, wave their arms and carefully mimic the gestures of a young woman in a Red Cross and Red Crescent vest.
Dash Bare Sagar arrived in a Dadaab refugee camp in 2011 following continued clashes in his home area of Jilib, Somalia, which left his uncle dead. He managed to escape with his mother, wife, as well as five children (two from his deceased uncle) and travelled to Kenya where he became a community leader in his camp and a Kenya Red Cross volunteer.
Each hospital bedsheet that Deki Tamang washes represents another brick in the new home that she hopes to build for her children one day. Since the Nepal earthquakes reduced her house in Dhunche to rubble, the mother of four has worked full-time at the laundry in the Canadian Red Cross field hospital operating on the site of the original damaged hospital.
June 20th marked the two-year anniversary of the Alberta Floods. High River residents gathered together to celebrate how far they’ve come since that devastating day.
When pre-election violence broke out in Burundi in April, volunteers with the Burundi Red Cross were among the first to respond. The protests led to a number of casualties, and forced more than 96,000 people to seek safety in neighbouring countries.
Local Nepalese staff including drivers and translators hired to support the Red Cross field hospital in Dhunche are getting first aid training this week.