Recession and Home Blazes Send Red Cross Reeling
February 17, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
American Red Cross chapters are struggling to meet demands for services as donations dwindle and a seasonal surge of household fires stretches their resources thin, the Associated Press reports.
Staff members have been laid off, office hours reduced, salaries cut, and training programs scrapped at Red Cross offices nationwide. “Every chapter is finding this a challenging environment,” said Suzy DeFrancis, national Red Cross spokeswoman.
House fires, which account for most of the approximately 71,000 local disasters the Red Cross responds to annually, have been unusually frequent this year, in part due to unorthodox heating methods used by financially strapped families amid this winter’s bitter cold.
See The Chronicle’s roundup of nonprofit layoffs.
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