Northwest wildfires have had widespread effects on travel and air quality. Another unfortunate consequence is a critically low blood supply.
Several compounding factors have squeezed the blood supply. Mobile donation drivers can’t get to some rural sites, and university and high school drives aren’t yet running. There are other reasons, too, says Cynthia Vignos of the Lane Blood Center:
Vignos: “Some of our best donors, our most dedicated regular donors, are firefighters, and of course we can’t go to them and say ‘hey, you’ve been working 16 hours a day for two weeks straight, can you come in and give some blood?’, so we’ve lost that. And then there’s the unfortunate reality that there’s injuries and severe burns from the fires.”
Vignos says donations from the Eugene center go to hospitals as far away as Roseburg and Florence. Lane Blood Center encourages anyone who can give to do so. They’re in critical need of O negative, A negative and B negative blood. They’re also accepting donations of high protein foods for firefighters.
