Local woman there to comfort families of plane crash victims

Angela Soo

Friday, Aug. 31, 2001 | 4:02 a.m.

A plane carrying American citizens crashes in a foreign land. Hundreds of family members are shocked, confused, searching for answers and anything to grapple with their pain.

The families want to be closer, and travel thousands of miles to the crash site, hoping to find comfort in proximity.

Chances are, Kathy Risdon will already be there waiting for them.

Risdon, a Red Cross volunteer of 11 years, is part of a new International Red Cross program that is designed to help American plane crash victims and their family members while they are in a foreign country.

The International Aviation Incident Response Team is a 25-member volunteer group, which includes 11 licensed mental health professionals and 14 administrative/public affairs volunteers who are specially trained in responding to international aviation accidents.

Risdon was one of the 11 mental health professionals selected from a group of 400 volunteers nationwide to focus on providing emotional support and psychological counseling. She returned last week from a five-day training session in Costa Rica.

"What you're dealing with is intense grief during an aviation crisis," said Risdon, who works full time at the Clark County Fire Department as an employee assistance specialist.

The National Red Cross already has a domestic Aviation Incident Response Team that works with the airline or airport in helping families and any remaining survivors. Risdon volunteered for five years on the domestic team before expanding to the international level.

"You're not there to give advice," Risdon said. "You're there to listen. We're good at listening and making assessments about whether we need to intervene or not. Some folks need to be alone and that's a clinical decision you need to make. It's not how much you say, but how you listen."

But Risdon says the new program will be nothing like the at-home version because the rules might be different in a foreign country.

"This is going to be very different from the domestic response team," Risdon said. "In the United States, the roles are definitively described after an aviation crisis occurs. You have a very specific thing you're going to do."

After the TWA airplane crash in 1996, Congress passed a federal mandate that required the National Transportation Safety Board to set up a family assistance program that would be available to all domestic airlines in times of crisis.

The mandate would also require the airline to arrange temporary lodging for family members and any surviving victims.

"You're going to a country that you haven't necessarily been invited to," Risdon said. "We have to be ambassadors and be aware of the politics and social morays. There may be language barriers and even different methods of retrieving bodies."

Doug Allen, the director of the International Response Unit, said the Red Cross has had an international presence for many years.

"We've responded internationally for quite some time," Allen said.

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