By mandate of the US Congress, the American Red Cross is responsible for responding to disasters that effect the normal daily life of our citizens. American Red Cross Disaster Relief Operations are given a designation based on the anticipated cost of the operations. Designation levels are as follows:

LEVEL I - Recurrent local disaster (Single Family Fires)

LEVEL II - Cost less than $50,000, excluding recurrent local disasters

LEVEL III - Costs from $50,000 to $250,000

LEVEL IV - Costs from $250 to $2.5 million

LEVEL V - Costs in excess of $2.5 million

The Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross provides an immediate response to disasters occurring within an eight county jurisdiction. Our plan to accomplish this task includes the capability of providing manpower, material and financial resources to meet the needs of disaster victims. The mentioned manpower comes almost solely from volunteers. In addition, the Capital Area Chapter provides volunteer staffing for National Disaster Relief Operations. This requires a commitment of from several days, to as much as three weeks from volunteers. With this in mind, the State of Florida, Leon County and the City of Tallahassee each enacted their own Disaster Leave Laws.

These Disaster Leave Laws indicate that an employee who is certified as an American Red Cross Disaster Services Volunteer may be granted a leave of absence with pay for not more than 15 working days in any 12 month period to participate in specialized disaster relief services for the American Red Cross.

Each of the Disaster Leave Laws defines disaster as any designated at a LEVEL II and above in the American Red Cross Disaster Services Program ARC 3000. The disaster levels designated by the American Red Cross are stated above for your information.

Many times people think of a disaster as being a catastrophic event such as a hurricane or tornado. As you can see, this may not be the case since a LEVEL II disaster is a disaster that the American Red Cross spends less than $50,000 in responding to.

We may request a volunteer's services two or three days before a catastrophic event occurs. Such as a hurricane. This is because we need volunteers to staff City, County and State Emergency Operation Centers and to prepare to open shelters. As you can see by paragraph two of this document we must be prepared at all times. Our slogan is HELP CAN'T WAIT.

Your employees that qualify for the leave under the above referenced Disaster Leave Laws must be certified. Therefore, we provide those certified employees with the proper credentials and they should be able to present these when requesting leave to work on a Disaster Relief Operation. For our records such leave should be requested on American Red Cross Form 6520-B which has been provided to the employee.

Since our legislative bodies have authorized these Disaster Leave Laws for people that have the proper credentials, the Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross solicits your support in helping us meet the DISASTER NEEDS OF FLORIDA CITIZENS. If at all possible, please approve the leave requested by properly certified employees. HELP CAN'T WAIT 5 or 10 days, it must be provided when needed.