Wildfires in Arizona, flooding in the northwest and Vermont, and the continued recovery and clean-up from tornadoes has Red Cross workers fanning out across the country to help people forced from their homes.

• More than 650 people sought refuge in Red Cross shelters Tuesday night in 11 states across the U.S.
• In Arizona, wildfires have burned more than 386,000 acres, forcing thousands of people from their homes. The huge fire is only five percent contained. More than seven towns in Apache County have been evacuated with more on alert. In New Mexico, residents have been issued pre-evacuation alerts. The Red Cross is feeding and sheltering people affected by the fires.
• Flooding in Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois and Vermont is threatening homes and causing mandatory and voluntary evacuations along the swollen rivers. Red Cross workers are feeding those affected and offering safe refuge in shelters.
• Clean-up and recovery continues in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri and Alabama, where tornadoes heavily damaged communities this spring. Red Cross workers are operating shelters, and distributing meals, drinks, comfort kits and clean-up items throughout the affected areas.

Since March 31, the Red Cross has launched 42 relief operations in 29 states helping people affected by tornadoes, floods and wildfires by:

• Serving more than 2.9 million meals and snacks.
• Opening more than 260 shelters and providing 30,000 overnight stays.
• Providing more than 65,000 mental health and health consultations.
• Handing out more than 1.3 million relief items like toothbrushes and shampoo, tarps, coolers, rakes and other clean-up supplies.
• Deploying more than 12,000 trained disaster relief workers from all 50 states.

Please consider making a donation today to help the thousands of people who have been affected by these disasters which have affected more than half of the country during the last two months.

• To donate, visit www.redcross.org, call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) or text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation.
• Contributions may also be sent to your local Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013.
• The Red Cross estimates that it will spend as much as $51 million responding to the disasters that have occurred since March 31 – and the cost is growing everyday as new disasters occur.
• The estimate includes the continuous string of disasters that have hit the United States over the past two months, including the wildfires in Texas and Arizona, the dozens of tornadoes which devastated areas of the South and Midwest and flooding in the northwest and along the Mississippi River.
• Over the past two months, the Red Cross has raised more than $54 million for disaster response.
• Nationally, the Red Cross must raise about $378 million annually to respond to an average of 70,000 disasters each year, and these major disasters over the past several weeks adds an additional $51 million more to this amount.
• Our work isn’t done yet, since tornadoes are historically frequent throughout June and the 2011 hurricane season, which started June 1, is predicted to be above average.