BATON ROUGE, La. -- Colorado crews arrived in Louisiana on Friday and Saturday in advance Hurricane Ida, which as of Monday morning had mostly made its way into Mississippi and Alabama after killing at least one person in its wake.
"Well, we were hunkering down trying to make sure we stay safe from the weather,” Colorado American Red Cross volunteer Darlene Moore said.
It's a waiting game for the 12 Colorado Red Cross volunteers in Baton Rouge and those helping virtually, to see exactly what Ida brings them.
"A lot of the clients are sleeping right now, even though this hurricane is on its way. So that that makes my job easy, because I'm not having to feed anybody,” Moore added.
Moore is working in the kitchen helping feed people, and this deployment is special to her.
"I joined up during Katrina. I didn't come here to the Gulf Coast at that time, I went to Virginia — Falls Church, Virginia — to work at the call center during Katrina. But yeah, it's like I said, it's like my anniversary, too,” she said.
Denver7 spoke to Darlene mid-afternoon Sunday. Louisiana was only getting light rain and winds then.
"We've got rain, some cloudy skies. All in all, it looks like a Colorado storm right now. But I know in a couple hours, it's going to look very different than it does,” American Red Cross Regional Communications Officer Andrea Carlson added.
With most of the worst of the storm expected to arrive late Sunday or early Monday, there's actually not a lot of nervousness going around.
“We are ready for tonight. We've planned, we've prepped, we prepared. And so now it is it's that waiting game of what is going to happen, when is it going to hit, if it hits, is it going to be as bad as we think it's going to be?” Carlson said.
But regardless of what comes their way, they want to be there and help.
“We all have the same goal and that's to help people get through their disasters and we're here for them,” Moore said.
The volunteers are scheduled to come back Sept. 9, but that and their location could change depending on how things look once the storm has passed.
If you'd like to help people affected by Hurricane Ida, you can do so by clicking here.
