Image: ork
At this year’s district office meeting of the Red Cross Vöcklabruck, the district management presented an impressive balance sheet for the year 2022: The aid organization is supported by 2054 employees in the district. 1,759 of them (88 percent) work voluntarily for the Red Cross.
Rescue drove 1.3 million kilometers
The emergency services responded 45,580 times. That means one mission every eleven minutes. The rescuers went out 8,547 times at night, and 2,686 times an ambulance was needed. The ambulances from the nine local offices covered a total of 1.3 million kilometers last year.
Although the rescue service is the Red Cross’s most visible service, it is by no means the only one. For example, the pandemic kept the district organization busy. 50 employees worked 32,508 hours (mostly on a voluntary basis) and made 37,466 PCR tests and 20,497 vaccinations possible.
The voluntary social services of the Red Cross in Vöcklabruck carried out 53,901 home visits in health and social services. They enabled 124 financially disadvantaged people to make 2,519 purchases at the Red Cross Market, and funded 7,835 meals on wheels. Nearly 5,700 blood donations have been collected under Red Cross direction, and the Red Cross Youth operates 15 youth groups throughout the district.
And what do the Red Cross volunteers themselves say? On behalf of the many voluntary helpers, we let Lukas Kiener, paramedic in St. Georgen im Attergau, have his say. “The feeling when rescue workers and the emergency doctor on the scene rely on you 100 percent and you can put the skills you’ve learned into practice is simply indescribable,” he says.
Source: Nachrichten
