"It was the hardest, most emotionally wrenching job you could have as a Red Cross volunteer,” said Ali Dileo of his time as a Disaster Assessment & Damage Verification volunteer in Baton Rouge in mid-October, 2005. “And it was an amazing experience.”

Ali had left his previous position as a Director of Sales, Marketing and Business Development for a Multimedia and Production Company in early September, just after Hurricane Katrina hit. Like so many people, he was touched by the TV images of the storm battering the Gulf States. Instead of finding a new job, he decided to put his life on hold and become a Red Cross Volunteer.

Within three weeks, he had taken four Red Cross disaster training courses and worked at the Katrina Welcome Center, assisting hurricane survivors who made their way from the Gulf Coast to New York City.

Ali was deployed to Baton Rouge and placed in Disaster Assessment & Damage Verification. Within a few days, he became a trainer and team leader, showing other volunteers the ropes and visiting hurricane victims' residences to inspect the damage they had and determine if they qualified for financial assistance.

What made this particular assignment so challenging? “Not only are you dealing with clients face-to-face,” Ali said, “but you"re going inside their homes after they’ve lost part of their homes or even family members. Sometimes it felt like we were in a third world country, seeing trailers that were uninhabitable from mold and storm damage.”

“Nevertheless,” he said, “I walked into this job with open arms. I loved training people, showing new volunteers what to do.” He added that he was also quite comfortable speaking with storm victims. “Just being there and being supportive and giving survivors a hug and listening to their stories was as important as anything else we volunteers could have done.”

Ali is justifiably proud of the triage system he developed that allowed him and his team to visit an increased number of homes each day. The system involved teams of three, with one person driving, one navigating and one processing paperwork. 

“We would first call people and try to do a phone assessment of the kind of damage they had in order to save time,” he said. “We also tried to get all the zip codes together and map them out. We had some good software to pinpoint locations on the computer, rather than using roadmaps that didn’t have all the roads on them.”

On a good day, Ali and his team saw 15 or 20 families, driving 400 miles. “Sometimes you’d have to call the client and ask for directions, and they’d say, Make a left at the church,” he said. “There are probably five churches within a square mile of any residential area. But we always found our way.”

According to Ali, some folks with no structural damage called the Red Cross because they’d heard that the organization was “giving away money.” Ali explained to them that the money was needed for people who had real damage. “I’d say 85% of them understood,” he said. “I always reassured them that they did the right thing by calling us. I’d tell them to feel free to call us in the future if they had anything happen—that’s what we’re here for.”

One story particularly moved Ali: that of an elderly gentleman whose wife had filed false claims, taking both his Red Cross and FEMA checks. The man was on a respirator and mold was taking over his house, but he refused to go to a shelter because he wouldn’t leave his dog. “He’d lost all hope,” said Ali.

Ali and the other volunteers spent an hour with the man, problem solving. They told him he couldn’t stay in his home, located additional local resources for him in the Yellow Pages, and had their Red Cross supervisors look at his file.

“After five days,” said Ali, “I went back, and he was a changed man. FEMA had tracked down the wife and threatened to press charges unless she returned the money. Red Cross helped him get into a FEMA trailer park that allowed him to bring his dog. The man went from homeless to rejuvenated in less than a week. That was one of the most touching experiences I had.”

“This whole experience was eye opening,” Ali continued. “I look at the world differently now. The little things don’t matter to me anymore. Being hugged by the victims down there—it changes you. It makes you more appreciative of life. It makes me want to give more.”