We are in Akron, Ohio at the Red Cross chapter office here (map). As long as I have mentioned it, let me just say that this is also the nicest chapter office I have ever seen -- it's a beautiful new purpose-built building that they occupied perhaps five years ago; the walls are adorned with plaques dedicating each space to the donor(s) who made it possible. The Ohio flooding response is headquartered here in a large conference room in the basement.
We made it nearly all the way here last night, stopping about five miles away at (can you guess) an Olive Garden for dinner. We spent the night in the parking lot of a shopping center across the street (map).
No sooner had we walked through the door this morning and started the process of signing in than my phone started ringing. It was another call from the Disaster Operations Center (DOC) informing us that three new operations were being put together, for New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. We are on standby alert that they will be redeploying us almost immediately to whichever of those three operations will be the largest. We need to start rolling that way as soon as possible, as we are between six and eight hours from those floods, but we can't leave here until they figure out how they are going to backfill us here.
I don't think I will get another chance to post until we land in the next location -- stay tuned here for updates.
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