By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
A St. Joseph woman and Red Cross volunteer is headed to an island and U.S. Territory in the Pacific Ocean that was recently hit by one of the strongest typhoons in recent history.
Typhoon Mawar hit the island of Guam in late May. Guam is a U.S. territory in the North Pacific. It’s the most populated island in the Northern Mariana Islands.
Mawar made landfall in Guam on May 24, dumping over 20 inches of rain and bringing 140 mph winds with it. It was the strongest tropical cyclone in the northern hemisphere so far this year.
Peggy Gaines has volunteered through the St. Joseph Red Cross for over 15 years. This will be her first international trip, and she’ll be helping residents on the island find more suitable housing.
"It'll be a long trip," she said. "I'm going there to work with Red Cross disaster recovery. I'm going to be doing shelter residence transition, which means I'll try and help people get out of shelters into more sustainable housing."
Gaines says a big motivation for her going on this trip is the large U.S. Military presence at Guam, who also took the brunt of the storm damage. Of the 150,000 residents on the island, about a third of them are U.S. military personnel.
"They all had this disaster, too," Gaines said. "They're all part of this recovery. Red Cross is working in sheltering and feeding of course, but we're also trying to take those steps in recovery, because it's been almost a month now."
Gaines leaves for Guam on Friday. She’ll be there for three weeks. She says one of the biggest challenges of this disaster relief effort will be helping the larger families whose homes were damaged or destroyed.
"I was told it's not abnormal to find families of 14-15 people in home, so it'll be hard to find housing for those bigger families."
This will be Gaines’ 51st disaster relief trip. She’s helped with a variety of events and hardships, from house fires, hurricanes and tornadoes. She was in Florida this past winter helping with Hurricane Ian relief.
Gaines says her motivation for doing this is fairly simple.
"I have everything I need," she said. "These people have nothing, or close to nothing. That's why I go to help. If I can offer hope and give them a way forward, that's what I'll try to do, and Red Cross educates you very well on that."
Gaines says there’s several ways everyone can help the Red Cross in these disaster relief efforts.
"People in the U.S. can learn to be a volunteer and volunteer your time and skills and go. Or, you can go to RedCross.org and donate."
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