When news of the Nepal earthquake reached Victoria, Lise Anne Pierce gathered her husband and two young sons together for a family meeting.
The topic: How did everyone feel about mom heading overseas to help the survivors in Kathmandu?
A senior official with the Canadian Red Cross, Pierce has trained for years in disaster relief. She deployed to Haiti for nearly six weeks following the earthquake in 2010. She served on the front lines with the Red Cross during the fires and floods in Alberta, and she was on scene at the train derailment and deadly explosion in Lac-Mégantic, Que.
“There’s a commitment that, when something happens, if you’re available, that you’ll go,” she said. “But it’s certainly not like a military deployment where you don’t get a choice. This is actually a family decision.
“I’ve got a husband and kids, so we actually all sat down on Saturday morning and had a conversation about whether or not we could make it work.”
Her husband and 13-year-old son were immediately supportive. Her youngest boy had more of a struggle; he’ll turn 11 while his mother is away.
“He’s proud of the work,” Pierce said. “But he’s sad that I’m missing his birthday, and that’s always a tough one.”
Pierce, 41, leaves today for Kathmandu, where she will join an international team in charge of co-ordinating shelter-relief efforts by various organizations.
“It’s early days after this big of an event,” she said. “So, by nature, disasters are chaotic and confusing and complicated and mucky.
“But I think the role that I’m being deployed in is exactly to help move that along, so that it becomes a little more organized and a clearer picture develops around where the needs are.”
The Canadian Red Cross also sent a mobile field hospital and a medical team to Nepal on Tuesday. The hospital, which can treat up to 200 people a day, will focus on the health of mothers and infants in the wake of the 7.8-magnitude quake.
This will be Pierce’s first opportunity to deploy to an international zone within days of a disaster. She arrived in Haiti four months after the earthquake there.
But, in many ways, she’s been preparing for this assignment her entire life.
“Since I was little, I’ve always taken news of these sorts of events really hard,” she said. “I always felt like I needed and wanted to be able to do something.”
The University of Victoria graduate kept upgrading her skills, and now manages the Red Cross disaster-management program in B.C. and the Yukon. Recently, she was seconded to manage the agency’s catastrophic-disaster readiness project.
She expects to stay in Nepal for four weeks.
“My training in shelter co-ordination is something that’s very needed over there,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “So I feel really good being able to provide that support.”
It’s an important job, but one that would be impossible without the backing of her family and the entire community, she said.
“The only reason that I have the privilege of being able to do this is because Victorians and British Columbians are so generous,” she said. “The donations that come in help to support this type of deployment and the work that we’ll be doing on the ground.
“So the best way to help is through donations,” she said. “Every dollar really does make an incredible amount of difference out in the field.”
How you can help
Canadians who want to help aid efforts can contact the Red Cross, which has already mobilized teams in Nepal. “We have volunteers and local societies on the ground,” said Phyllis Argue of the Red Cross’s Victoria office. She said calls are flooding in from citizens wanting to help. “People in Victoria as well as B.C. and the rest of Canada are being very generous.”
Argue said it’s too early to say how much has been donated, but the office plans to bring in extra volunteers to deal with the inquires.
To donate money, go to redcross.ca or call 1-800-418-1111. Local groups that want to organize fundraisers for the Red Cross can visit redcross.ca/communityfundraising.
Ottawa has committed $5 million to help Nepal and will match Canadians’ donations dollar-for-dollar until May 25.
