The Red Cross of Alaska is setting up a permanent volunteer office in Kenai and has invited the community to meet the volunteers and tour the new location on Friday during their open house. The event will take from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. The Kenai office is located at 450 Marathon Road on the second floor of the Beacon Fire Training Building.

Cari Dighton, regional communications director for the Red Cross of Alaska, said that the pool of volunteers on the peninsula has been growing steadily over the past few years. With the nearest Red Cross office currently in Anchorage, peninsula volunteers often have to do training sessions from their homes and use whatever facility would lend the Red Cross space for disaster relief efforts. To address these roadblocks, Regional Philanthropy Officer Melanie Leydon reached out to the city of Kenai for a potential location for their office. The Kenai City Council responded by voting unanimously in February to give Red Cross the office space on Marathon Road.

Kenai Peninsula Action Team Coordinator Dave LaForest said that having a central office on the peninsula will increase their capabilities in terms of both disaster response and volunteer recruitment. LaForest said that one important use for the office will be as a place of temporary refuge and respite for those who have just experienced a disaster.

“We were meeting people in dark corners of Safeway in the middle of the night,” LaForest said.

The office will be open and staffed exclusively by volunteers Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., but volunteers are also on call 24/7 to respond to emergencies. LaForest said that the most common emergencies on the peninsula are house fires, but volunteers are trained to respond to a wide variety of disasters including fires, floods and earthquakes.

The Kenai location will also be a part of the Service to the Armed Forces outreach that the Red Cross provides to members of the military, veterans and their families. These services include relaying emergency communications from families to service members overseas, facilitating their return home and providing counseling and resiliency workshops. The resiliency workshops are designed to help people struggling with coming home after being deployed by exploring stress and trauma, working through anger and teaching children how to cope with having parents deployed overseas.