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The Round-up offers a weekly sample of what our sister Red Cross Societies are working on around the world.

Five Canadian Red Cross medical personnel are being deployed to South Sudan to increase the International Committee of the Red Cross’ (ICRC) surgical capacity in communities recently affected by conflict in the region.

When a CN Rail train derailed last week, resulting in fire in several petroleum tank cars and the evacuation of more than 100 people from homes in a rural area in northwest New Brunswick, a team of Canadian Red Cross disaster volunteers was in place within hours to help.

The Red Cross worked out of a community centre in the nearby village of Plaster Rock, NB and supported evacuees and responders around the clock for nearly five days.

When disasters strike and the world rushes to help, emergency responders often feel the pressure to rebuild quickly, but building back better takes time. That’s why the Red Cross sent state-of-the-art emergency medical teams to Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake four years ago, and again months later when cholera broke out across the country. These shorter-term missions allowed us to provide life-saving care to families in need, while also taking the time to properly plan longer-term recovery projects to help communities not just return to their pre-earthquake lives, but to actually improve families’ lives for many years to come.

Volunteers are the life blood of the Canadian Red Cross. Volunteers help respond to both local and larger-scale emergencies and disasters including house fires and the effects of severe weather like floods or evacuations.

This week, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Maurer went to South Sudan to assess how to assist people who are affected by the latest conflict.

Since the outbreak of violence in mid December, thousands have died or have been wounded, and tens of thousands of people have fled their homes fearing for their lives.

Denyse had always wanted to do humanitarian work but the opportunity didn’t present itself until a few years ago, after she raised her two kids and the Canadian Red Cross began deploying psychosocial support delegates after the Haiti earthquake.

Haiti was Denyse’s first mission with the Red Cross. Since then she’s been back to Haiti a second time to provide psychosocial support during a cholera outbreak, and to Pakistan to provide that same support after a flood. Her latest deployment  as a member of the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) has taken her to the Philippines, to help out after Typhoon Haiyan.  

We’re barely into January and this winter season has already left us yearning for tropical getaways and the relatively balmy days of spring.
Terms like frost quakes and polar vortex are being tossed about in the media to explain what we’ve been experiencing. These phenomena are not new, but what exactly are they?