Although Anna Kiefte has been back in Wolfville for more than a month since being deployed in Alberta as a Red Cross volunteer this summer, the incredible power of humanity she witnessed in the face of an unprecedented natural disaster lingers.

Kiefte, a physics instructor and member of the Emergency Response Team (ERT) at Acadia, spent three weeks in June and July in flood-ravaged Calgary and High River, AB as a member of a Red Cross disaster response team, providing relief and assisting in the recovery phase of the operation.

Prior to that, she worked in a Red Cross call centre in Dartmouth after flooding had occurred and notes, “it was all very fresh. The flood had just happened two or three days prior and we were getting calls from people that had been displaced, looking for shelter. We also got panicked calls from loved ones all over the country looking for people, asking if this person or that person was safe.”

The mandate in any Red Cross operation is to keep people safe, well and alive in small or large scale disasters, and the call centre gave Kiefte an opportunity to register people affected, determine the status of certain neighbourhoods, and respond to immediate concerns.

Onsite later in High River after a week-long stint in the Red Cross’s central distribution warehouse in Calgary, Kiefte went door-to-door doing client field assessments, meeting with people at their homes and identifying what they might need. Most were still just getting into their homes and she says there was a lot of anxiety and frustration.

Hard to see people that way

“I was walking through neighbourhoods and seeing people’s possessions on their front lawn; refrigerators and freezers full of food that had gone bad; the smell of caked-on mud and excrement. It was hard to see people that way, and there were a lot of emotions involved.”

Coping required two tools: empathy and compassion. “I try to be as warm and caring as possible without it being personalized too much. You have to steel yourself, but also remain warm, and that comes with training and a certain disposition, too. There’s the ability at the end of the day, within a community of fellow Red Crossers, to know that we’re working with highly vulnerable and affected people and that we’re all in the same boat. We’re not alone in this.”

Kiefte describes a very intense situation. She worked long hours, 11 to 18-hour days in four different places, yet found the experience affirming. “You’d never want to see this happen,” she says emphatically, “but I think it was affirming that, when things do happen, others are willing to step in and do their best, make a terrible situation bearable, and keep others safe.

“It’s very heartening. Human beings are human beings, and the word ‘resilience’ sticks in my mind when I look at the scenario and the people I met. The number of community members helping out strangers in their homes, digging out stuff from their basements, offering food, water, comfort and their expertise.

“People are people no matter where they live or who they are, and it’s amazing what happens when people come together.”