Save the Children Stands Ready to Help Kids and Families in the Carolinas Threatened by Powerful Hurricane Florence

As Hurricane Florence continues to intensify into a life-threatening storm, bringing up to 225 kilometre per hour winds and heavy rains towards the coastline of North and South Carolina, Save the Children is assembling a team in North Carolina to help children and families bracing for the powerful storm.

Save the Children is deploying its emergency response team and pre-positioning essential child-focused supplies, as well as communicating with national and state partners to assess children’s immediate needs in response to Hurricane Florence.

“Children are always among the most vulnerable when disaster strikes, and our thoughts and hearts go out to children and families along the coastline of the Carolinas,” said Jeanne-Aimee De Marrais, Save the Children’s senior advisor for U.S. emergencies. “With more than one million people facing evacuation orders, we hope they are able to return to their homes soon. But while families are displaced during this crisis, Save the Children will be there to help them recover.”

As the leading organization for children in emergencies, Save the Children deployed emergency response teams in response to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in the earliest days of those unprecedented 2017 disasters. Save the Children emergency response teams set up child friendly spaces in evacuation shelters, coordinated emergency distributions of child-centric materials, and played a leading role in getting children back to learning and returning to normalcy.

Save the Children also responded to Hurricane Matthew in the Carolinas in 2016, helping children, families and early learning centres recover, and has been operating its signature early learning and elementary school age education programs in South Carolina since 2003.

Save the Children’s humanitarian response team are specially trained to help vulnerable children during disasters and their aftermath.

Save the Children believes every child deserves a future. In Canada and around the world, we give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. We do whatever it takes for children – every day and in times of crisis – transforming their lives and the future we share.

ENDS

Note to Editors:

Jeanne-Aimee De Marrais, who has been leading Save the Children’s emergency response efforts in the U.S. for the past 13 years, starting with Hurricane Katrina, is available for media interviews.