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Approximately 90 percent of the American Red Cross membership is volunteer, drawing people from all ages, ethnicity, and background. These volunteers respond to nearly 70,000 disasters every year, mostly home and apartment fires. They also put on training programs and blood drives.

This article utilizes excerpts from interviews to illustrate the story narrative of an illness, showing how emotion and values are reflected in the creation of a "plot" of the narrative, and uses statistics and broader research to analize these stories from a broader, more societal perspective. 

With every new disaster it faces, the ARC draws much on its own research and the experiances of the Global Red Cross. Recent major domsetic disasters the ARC has faced include Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy,