ST. FREDERICK, Maryland — While Tropical Storm Isais moved up the east coast, dozens of Ohio volunteers sprung into action.

What You Need To Know

  • 25 Red Cross Volunteers from Central and Southern Ohio traveled east to help with damage after Isaias

  • It was the first large-scale, in-person deployment for the Red Cross chapter since the pandemic

  • To ensure social distancing, shelters could only fill to a third of the capacity, meaning more shelters and a need for more volunteers

  • The Red Cross has struggled to find volunteers willing to commit time or travel due to uncertainty during the pandemic

Hundreds of Red Cross volunteers made their way to North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland to help impacted communities cope with the damage, including 25 from Central and Southern Ohio.

Nancy Boosveld was one of them.

“It’s just amazing the services that we provide during this disaster,” she said.

When she's back home, she works as a nurse at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Tuesday evening she was awaiting orders to open a shelter in southern Maryland.

“It is my passion to use the skills that I have learned over all of my years of nursing to use them in a volunteer setting," Boosveld said.

Just like at her hospital though, everything about working in these shelters is different now.

“With COVID, we have very specific rules; there’s more PPE that needs to be worn by the health service nurse who’s going to be assisting with those clients," she said. "And we have a lot of doctrine to follow as far as questions to ask”

Boosveld also said the shelters will have increased sanitation standards, an isolation section for people who have been exposed to COVID-19 and strict social distancing policies.

Marita Salkowski, marketing director for the Central and Southern Ohio region of the Red Cross, said it's been a long time since volunteers have even been part of an in-person response.

“A lot of our responses now are done virtually as opposed to going to the scene and meeting the people in person,” she said.

Salkowski said this is the first large-scale response for central and southern Ohio's volunteers since the pandemic and the organization is doing everything it can to keep them safe during their travels.

“Now you have a shelter where people are spread out where they’re socially distant, where they’re getting health checks, wearing masks, making sure everything is sanitized,” she said.

That means shelters can only fill up to a third of their capacity, and the Red Cross will have to open more of them to ensure everyone who needs help can get it.

"That results in the need for more volunteers because more shelters requires more people to run them,” Salkowski said.

Like everything else though, she said the pandemic has made finding volunteers particularly difficult.

“We’re in situations where people have lost jobs, people don’t know if their kids are going back to school in the fall and sometimes making a commitment to something like the Red Cross is just one more thing they don’t want to put on their plate,” Salkowski said.

For Boosveld, that was the very reason she felt she had to step up.

“Certain volunteers cannot travel because of their age or because of some disabilities that they should not be around COVID," she said. "So now more than ever I think it’s so important for those of us who can volunteer their time to do that.”

Even miles from home, facing a storm and a pandemic, Boosveld said she was right where she needed to be.

“I just love it and I’m happy to be here,” she said.

According to the Red Cross, the response only starts after the storm blows through. Volunteers will stay on the ground and more may come in depending on the need in the community and how many shelters they need.