ROGERS (KFSM) -- President Obama issued a state of emergency for Florida as the state braces for Hurricane Matthew to make landfall later Thursday (Oct. 6) as a Category 4 storm.
The Northwest Arkansas Red Cross already has people on standby who are ready to help in the aftermath.
The volunteers will be driving an emergency response vehicle to the area of that was hit the hardest.
“We`ll drive down there which will take us a couple of days at least to get there and then we will be feeding the people that are down there or be giving them items they can use to recover with,” volunteer Linda Morgan said.
Linda Morgan is a member of the Red Cross disaster action team. She's volunteered at more than 50 disasters across the nation.
Morgan said it's hard to say what the situation will be like once they get there, but there's usually a lot of people in need after a major hurricane.
“Usually they have no place to go and then there is no food when they get back to their homes. Their homes are messed up and so they need some help with getting back into their homes and food still because their utilities probably won`t be working,” Morgan said.
Executive director Julie Lolley said they have seven other volunteers planning to make the trip with Morgan.
“Once the storm has moved through and the danger for our people has passed then we will immediately be headed that way,” Lolley said.
Lolley said most volunteers are sent out on two week deployments and put in 12 hour days.
“From Louisiana, like I said we had a lot of people going out over the last six weeks. So it can be quite lengthy the time we have people in shelters and they are doing feeding and people down there working in storm effected areas,” she said.