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Morning News

Red Cross Volunteer Discusses Efforts to Assist Residents Amidst Montana Wildfires

Aired August 10, 2000 - 11:22 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANDRIA HALL, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to now take you to the fact that the fires out West are driving hundreds of people out of their homes. That's brought the Red Cross close to the front lines, with volunteers stepping in to help.

Red Cross volunteer Jack Hihnala joins us now on the telephone from Montana.

Jack, can you tell you what you're seeing now?

JACK HIHNALA, RED CROSS VOLUNTEER: What we're seeing around Helena is an awful lot of smoke. It's been this way for a number of days. And we've evacuated a number of the small towns just south of Helena, and they've been coming through our shelter here registering...

HALL: And...

HIHNALA: ... so that when somebody is calling looking for them, we can have their friends or relatives get in contact with them.

HALL: Now, those are people who've been evacuated from their homes. How imminent is the fire in terms of, perhaps, touching those home?

HIHNALA: It doesn't appear that they're getting very close to the homes right now, but the health hazard is really bad. Just south of town and just in the Helena area, there were six buildings burned last night. And we don't know that those were residences or not. They haven't reported whether they were residences that people lived in, but we think there were a couple that were.

HALL: And how are the people there holding up? They must be awfully frightened.

HIHNALA: Well, you know, it's a real nice environment here in Montana because everybody has friends or relations and they stay with them. But as they come through the shelter, you can see that some of them have a real concern on their face about their homes and how things are down in their neighborhood now that they can't go back -- and even the 15 or 20 mile away to their home, because there's roadblocks and they don't want anybody in the area. HALL: All righty. And at this point, what kind of assistance are you offering those people besides shelter and food? Any psychological or emotional counseling?

HIHNALA: Oh, yes, we do. We have a couple of registered nurses that work with us, and we also have a psychiatrist that works with us. And we've only had to utilize somebody that was a social worker one time. Somebody called last night and they were really disturbed that they had to leave. And their major concern, I think, was their animals and they became almost incoherent on the telephone. But we calmed them down and then we sent one of our social worker/registered nurses down to take care of them that night -- last night, and it seemed to work out OK.

But we've only had one really bad case, though, here in the last three or four days.

HALL: Well, Jack, we wish you the best of luck. We know that the Red Cross is doing the best it can to give those people comfort and give those people shelter. Well, keep us posted on that, OK, Jack.

All righty.

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