American Red Cross trains cross-border team

Mexican workers to aid response time

By Angelica Martinez
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

May 17, 2008

SAN DIEGO – Mexican Red Cross members began training for disaster response in San Diego yesterday to become part of a pioneering cross-border team.

A group of eight bilingual Mexican Red Cross staff members from Baja California met in Kearny Mesa for classroom-style sessions about the functions of the American Red Cross. The training is scheduled to continue through tomorrow.

The idea for cross-border teams came from lessons learned during the wildfires in October, said Araceli Gaines, a response associate for the American Red Cross in Imperial Valley.

At the time, Mexican firefighters who had already been training with firefighters here helped battle the flames near the border.

The Red Cross hopes the same collaboration can improve and quicken its disaster response along both sides of the border, Gaines said.

The challenge exists in the way each country has set up its Red Cross operations.

In Mexico, Red Cross workers function like paramedics 80 percent of the time, said Rigoberto Lozoya Canales, an executive coordinator for the Mexican Red Cross.

Workers there provide medical aid, transportation to hospitals and other emergency assistance. They are the first responders almost all the time, he said.

Those daily demands have kept them from obtaining the sort of experience that their counterparts north of the border have.

In the United States, Red Cross workers deal with “mass careâ€