North Notes
Spokane-North Rotary Club Bulletin
February 8, 2021
 
Calendar:
 
            Feb. 15:  (No meeting.  Presidents’ Holiday.)
 
            March 1: Rotary Zoom lunch, topic TBA.
 
Briefly: 
 
             Safe projects: President-elect Lenore Romney asks members to contribute project Covic-19-safe ideas for March and beyond to get the club back into a monthly routine of Rotary service.
 
             Happy Buck$$: Ron Noble and wife drove to Prosser – a 2 ½ hour trip -- for a 60th anniversary celebration.  Ron said he carefully avoided all of the wineries along the way.  Lenore Romney mentioned husband Bob’s 69th birthday, but Bob was on another call and missed the $1 shout out.  Dave Hayward was happy about getting his second Covid vaccine shot.
 
Red Cross adjusts to special challenges  
           
            While every organization has had to adjust to Covid country, the area Red Cross has had to make special changes.
 
            Ryan Rodin, executive director of the Greater Inland Northwest Red Cross chapter, discussed the challenges with the club at its Feb. 8 Zoom meeting. 
 
            Ryan, a Tacoma native and Whitworth University grad, joined the Red Cross chapter as a  board member in 2014 and rose to his leadership post in 2019.  Three months ago he joined the Club 21 Rotary and he has joined that club’s International Service Committee.
 
            Ryan’s Red Cross covers 15 counties – 10 counties in eastern Washington and five in North Idaho.  The chapter operates from its offices at 315 W. Cora and in East Wenatchee.
 
            His most recent challenge has been helping the residents in Malden and Pine City, Washington, where the disastrous fire and 50-miles-per-hour winds last Sept. 8 nearly leveled the towns of about 200 residents and surrounding area, including thousands of wheat land.  Malden is seven miles west of Rosalia.
 
            Rodin said he visited the site daily for more three weeks to help lead relief areas.
 
            The Red Cross, Rodin said, “is a very volunteer-centric organization.”  Globally, he said, there are about 25,000 staffers, but more than 300,000 volunteers.
 
            The Inland Northwest chapter, he said, has just three and one-half staffers and about 300 volunteers, including one gentleman who works on the chapter’s vehicles 20 hours a week.  He just celebrated his 90th birthday.
 
            Rodin discussed the organization’s areas of service.
 
            First was disaster response.  He said the Red Cross tries to go to every house fire in the country, offering shelter, food, cleanup supplies and counseling.  For the Malden fire, that meant knocking on more than 70 percent of the homes.  Hotel rooms in Spokane were houses in 70 people.
 
            Rodin said the Red Cross usually tries to set up nearby lodging, such as local school buildings, but the Covid pandemic makes those efforts difficulty.  Sometimes, he said, the contacts can only be made by phone, not in-person.
 
            Other Red Cross programs, he said, include blood collection programs, service for those in the Armed Services and their families, global inoculation programs, including measles and rubella, and lifesaving skills.
 
            With Covid continuing, the lifesaving skills, Rodin said, often means teaching on-line via Zoom, then mailing an artificial body to show CPR and first aid.  The dummy models are mailed back, sanitized, and reused, he said.
 
            Rodin said some disaster relief episodes are long-lasting.  Work is just ending for the chapter on the Carlton Complex Fire in 2014 in northeast Washington.  That was when he joined the board, when working for Greater Spokane, Inc.
 
            Red Cross connections with the Armed Services, he said, started in World War I and has expanded ever since.
 
 
The bulletin editors:                                                                                        
Bulletin editors: Chuck Rehberg and Sandy Fink