Darius Rucker Quotes

One in 5 Americans is touched by the Red Cross every single year.

The Red Cross in its nature, it aims and purposes, and consequently, its methods, is unlike any other organization in the country.It is an organization of physical action, of instantaneous action, at the spur of the moment; it cannot await the ordinary deliberation of organized bodies if it would be of use to suffering humanity,[ellipsis in original] it has by its nature a field of its own.

I do a lot of work with the Red Cross, too. As a reporter, before I went to entertainment news, I tended to follow natural disasters. I went to Charleston, South Carolina, after Hurricane Hugo. I went to Miami the year after they were recovering from Hurricane Andrew. I came to California when they were recovering from a big earthquake. I've seen the Red Cross and how they stay there years after a natural disaster. They're not just there when a disaster is happening.

It's not that bad things never happen. But there's a pattern in which most people are calm, resourceful, altruistic, and they improvise emergency systems that work really well - whether it's getting the babies out of a collapsed hospital or putting together a community kitchen to feed everybody for the next few months.

During the aftermath of Katrina, National Guard troops were positioned on every block to establish a sense of safety and source of help for the people in need. They did not leave communities until people were safe and sound.

There are disasters that happen - Hurricane Harvey came up, and you had people self-organizing through the community and getting in boats and driving around rescuing people coordinated ad hoc through this network. That's not a media function.

I think there was an overemphasis in the early stage on militarization rather than directly providing relief. I don't think it has any long-term significance.

As Mayor of San Francisco, I will work hard to ensure that, in the event of natural or man-made disasters, San Franciscans are prepared and our City is protected.

This is the United States of America. It means we respond to our fellow Americans in times of crisis and emergency and disaster.

Ever since Katrina, there has been a proliferation of efforts at the state level and among hospital administrators to come up with guidelines that would help professionals stuck in a situation like this to prioritize patients. These are questions of values much more than they are of medicine or nursing. They're the province of everybody.

We can never completely prevent another tragedy like the Boston Marathon attacks from happening. But every American should ask themselves if their community is as prepared as it could be.

Part of the redesign of FEMA is that they have so many people on standby, whether it is a retired nurse or a doctor who will take time off to go exactly where they are needed.

I married a woman from New Orleans, so I had family here. Post-Katrina, I had a number of friends call me up and say they wanted to do something to help the community - not just Habitat for Humanity or Red Cross, we've done that, but what can we do for the community.

It is vital that the entire international system is ready to meet the challenges of future disasters.

The larger the disaster, the more necessary it is to have the government as the principal driver of recovery.

Having worked in disasters, I have seen that, in those critical first few hours, those first few days - so much ends up riding on you and your neighbor and whoever is around. The official response always comes later, and it always feels like it comes too slow.

I think we're in good shape, but the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is in some small way mitigated by the fact that we now have more people talking about it, thinking about it and working on it, so that we will be more vigilant and ready.

For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.

If you have a major disaster involving hundreds of thousands, or in this case millions of people, whether it be a natural disaster or an act of terrorism, the first 72 hours are going to be totally chaotic no matter what you plan to do.

One of the things government should be around for is to deal with catastrophes. It should do that well. To me, that's a government function, and we shouldn't be playing political games with it.

I'm hoping that maybe I can be part of a disaster relief effort, something that's real life. That's kind of what I do anytime I stop working: 'OK, what's something that you've really wanted to do?'

I can only hope the federal aid made available today will be sufficient in our recovery efforts, and pray that our citizens continue to be safe from the fallout of this dangerous natural disaster.

As everyone in Louisiana knows, there was often no communication or coordination between the state and federal government in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

I think in the wake of Katrina, the Coast Guard may well have been the only entity or agency that came out of that exercise free of fault and free of blame.

We're creating an attitude that disaster relief is an entitlement program like Medicare of Social Security ....