Red Cross Prepares for Irene

WUNC | By Brent Wolfe

Published August 25, 2011 at 8:01 PM EDT

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The American Red Cross is moving equipment and personnel into place to help people who may be affected by Hurricane Irene. Timm Heisey with the Red Cross says 45 emergency response vehicles are being staged in Raleigh. He says many Triangle residents signed up to be volunteers after the April tornadoes.

Timm Heisey: "That's how I got involved with the Red Cross. So we have a number of lists of people who've been attending the trainings, and going online and getting background checks. You want to make sure that you have good, quality volunteers working. We've been notifying them saying 'hey, there's a possibility that you may be activated."
Heisey says volunteers will staff shelters around the state. Shelters are open in Rocky Mount and Wilson. Johnston County officials plan to open a shelter this afternoon.

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Brent Wolfe

Brent Wolfe grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and majored in American Studies at Tufts University outside Boston. In college, Brent was inspired by the narrative journalism style of J. Anthony Lukas' "Common Ground," the story of school desegregation and court ordered busing in Boston. After college, he donned a ranger hat with the National Park Service to tell visitors the story of Boston's African American community in the 19th century. Brent eventually made his way to public radio- learning the basics at WBUR in Boston and doing political reporting at KQED in San Francisco. He moved on to report for WILL in Champaign-Urbana and then Minnesota Public Radio in Rochester where he covered stories from medical research at the Mayo Clinic to a gopher catching festival. Brent joined WUNC's reporting staff in March 2000, became news editor in February 2003, and News Director in 2011. Brent served on the Board of Directors of the Public Media Journalists Association as Treasurer from 2019 to 2021.

See stories by Brent Wolfe