If you read my posts you know I'm a professional quibbler - the comments on volunteering during a disaster are spot on, but there is a reality that after a disaster, the number of spontaneous volunteers spikes, and they constitute an important reserve of ready labor for responder agencies, who rely upon volunteers. At a price of course - an organization has to divert attention from disaster response to fielding incoming volunteer requests, vetting, training them minimally for certain tasks, a whole slew of responsibilities. But on balance I think we find this diversion of resources is worth it, if you can accept certain limitations. The reality is that a spontaneous volunteer is seldom as capable or deployable as a volunteer before disaster strikes. Sending spontaneous volunteers into a disaster area is a little like combat, you hope for some skirmishes to get their feet wet (or soak their shorts as Dad put it) before a big battle - that's alot to expect. And there is another reality of spontaneous volunteers - after the disaster, and they have stopped unloading trucks, watching parking lots, emptying bed pans, maybe loading food trays, 99.5% don't continue their volunteerism with the agency who took them on. This is not to [censored] on spontaneous volunteers at all - there's something fundamentally good in people willing to stop and help others. It takes a special person who makes a commitment to volunteer ahead of disaster though - I know, I work with plenty of them day in day out.

I joke (and brag) that I can help organize food, shelter and clothing to 13,000 people, and set up disaster satellite communications to HQ in under an hour, among other things - but its no joke, I have those skills and others thanks to Red Cross training. Private plug, I have found that the Red Cross will take you wherever you want to go in terms of disaster assistance - granted, that may be to the next Katrina, or Loma Prieto, or wildfires, or midwest floods, but also to floods and fires in your own back yard, helping your literal neighbors. There's a slew of interesting work behind the front lines so to speak, in terms of language translation, logistics, fund raising, you name it. Its there in your community, consider a commitment if the volunteer urge is upon you. You may like it. And if you don't, unlike the military, you can always politely back away, no harm no foul. You would be none the worse for the training, that's for sure.