I can remember when I was about 11 or 12 there was a fire on Packing House Row in Goulds,FL.
There was about three miles of different produce packing house that caught on fire.
The Red Cross was one one side of US 1 selling coffee,doughnuts and sandwiches to the firemen while The Salvation Army was giving the same items to the firemen.
Clay Higgins is a reserve Lafayette, Louisiana, city marshal, so when the "Great Flood" hit his community earlier this month, he responded the only way he knew how — with prayer.
Higgins, who's also running for Congress, says Louisiana and America are places where neighbors rally together to help one another in their time of need, and he's seen much of that in the past few weeks.
But when he stopped by the Heymann Center in Lafayette to visit with displaced flood victims, Red Cross volunteers reportedly made him leave after he began comforting and praying with the evacuees.
Nancy Malone, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, told The Advocate that her organization has a policy "intended to be respectful of all faiths," but things would have been different for Higgins if he simply would have approached managers about the issue.
All spiritual care responders are trained to provide appropriate and respectful disaster spiritual care in line with Red Cross fundamental principles of impartiality and neutrality. It's best to let the survivors follow their own beliefs. Some welcome prayer while others don't.
While prayer is free, the Red Cross estimates that relief efforts in Louisiana will cost about $30 million.