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When 17-year-old Janie Inishinapay was forced to evacuate from her northern Ontario home in Kashechewan earlier this week because of extensive flooding, her first priority was ensuring the safety of her infant son, Rysen, who has cerebral palsy.

More than 200 Red Crossers continue their efforts to provide support to approximately 2,500 people forced to evacuate their homes in the First Nation communities of Kashechewan and Attawapiskat because of spring flooding.
 

Canadian Red Cross disaster response volunteers are providing assistance to approximately 1,500 people from the Northern Ontario community of Kashechewan which experienced severe flooding earlier this week. Evacuees are being sheltered in host communities across Ontario, including Thunder Bay, Cornwall, Greenstone and Kapuskasing.

With the Ebola virus affecting communities in Guinea since February, response activities ramped up in Guinea and neighbouring Liberia with Haiti now sharing expertise in beneficiary communications to help deal with the haemorrhagic fever outbreak.

Last week was Emergency Preparedness Week (May 4 – 10) and recent severe weather in the United States is a good example of disasters happening in an instant.

So now you’re prepared and have your emergency kit packed and stored somewhere easily accessible in times of disaster, but should that happen, what do you have in your kit to eat?

In preparing for an emergency, the Canadian Red Cross has a lot of information on how to plan for times that take us by surprise at www.redcross.ca/ready. Every household should have an emergency preparedness kit to help you get through the first 72 hours after a disaster strikes.

Six months since Typhoon Haiyan devastated the central Visayas region of the Philippines last November, the Red Cross has so far provided shelter and non-food items to 2.75 million people and over the next two years will help 800,000 survivors rebuild their lives.