Severe weather hit the middle Tennessee area today and wrecked havoc among many counties and communities. Straight line winds, tornadoes, hail and rain caused power outages, downed trees and major damage to residential and commercial areas.

The Nashville Area Chapter of the American Red Cross is assessing the damage and has volunteers mobilized to respond to the emergencies and client needs.

Currently, one shelter is opening at 7:00 pm this evening in Wilson County. Please direct anyone that needs a safe place to stay to this shelter, St. Stephens Catholic Church, 14577 Lebanon Road, Old Hickory, TN 37138. There are possibly two more that will be opening in other counties very soon.

The American Red Cross’ mission statement is about saving lives in emergency situations and meeting the humanitarian needs in disaster. In the Health and Safely department of the American Red Cross, one focus is saving lives through Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR). Nationally, the Red Cross trains five million people in CPR annually and the goal is to train an additional five million Americans with the new Citizens CPR in 2011.

The American Red Cross has now increased the certification length for all CPR classes to two years. In the past, this has always been a one year certification.  This means that all CPR classes taken through the Red Cross will have to be taken once every two years, not annually to maintain certification.

The Red Cross will offer free online refresher courses that individuals can take to stay up to date with the information. The Red Cross is also providing online training courses that allow participants to take the courses at convenient times from home. The ‘classroom’ portion is done online and then the person comes to the chapter for a 90 minute skills check session to make sure all the skills are understood and practiced on a mannequin.

Compression Only or Citizen’s CPR is a 30 minute course offering the ‘hands only’ CPR technique.  It consists of compressions only at a rate of 100 beats a minute to the rhythm of the song “Stayin’ Alive”. Recent research shows that if more people learned ‘hands-only’ CPR we can increase the likelihood of surviving cardiac emergencies that occur outside a hospital setting. In a life-threatening situation, performing ‘hands-only’ CPR is so much better than doing nothing at all. A recent Red Cross national survey showed that one in four people have been involved in a situation where someone needed CPR.

To increase awareness of the new online options, the Nashville Area Chapter of the American Red Cross is offering a discount on the online CPR classes in February and March.