A recent Cape Elizabeth High School graduate has just finished an American Red Cross training that will allow her to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina, and will get just 24 hours of advance warning before heading out to help.

Julia Integlia, who graduated in June, is taking a year off before college and wanted to do something worthwhile with her time. She thought about doing programs like AmeriCorps, but when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast the 18-year-old decided she wanted to help in the relief effort. She saw the American Red Cross had sent some volunteers from Portland and were looking to train more volunteers to help.

Integlia called to sign up for the two-day training that took place last weekend and was asked a host of intimidating questions, expected to “weed out” prospective volunteers who wouldn’t be able to handle the conditions. Integlia was asked whether she would be willing to sleep on the floor, and if she would work without a lot of food or water and no electricity.

Integlia said she knows the conditions she might be working under could be a lot worse than any of the questions she was asked. The truth is, she doesn’t know what she could be getting herself into and neither does the American Red Cross.

Integlia could be doing anything: watching children, signing people into the shelters, giving out water, making food, or, as her mother pointed out to her, something really horrible like counting bodies. “A lot of the stuff they can’t even train us for,” Integlia said.

American Red Cross relief workers will be in nine different states helping wherever shelters are put up and evacuees are shuttled to. Integlia said she doesn’t know where or when she’ll go; all she knows is that she’ll have a 24-hour notice to get ready for a three-week to a month-long trip.

Integlia said the trip would be the longest period of time she has been away from home and her family. However, she does hold out one hope. Her father, a doctor at the Maine Medical Center, has also discussed the possibility of being deployed to the affected areas with teams of volunteer doctors. She said there’s not a very big chance, but if her father is sent to help, she hopes he is in the same area as she is.

The weekend of training consisted of lectures and “movie after movie,” Integlia said, none of which were very helpful. She said the most interesting part was when a Red Cross volunteer came in to speak with them and explained how actual volunteering in a disaster situation could be.

The speaker tried to scare them off at first, telling the prospective volunteers how sure they had to be to go through with it. If they weren’t sure and went down to the disaster area and snapped, they simply become one of the victims.

The training didn’t change Integlia’s mind and she said she is still definitely going to do it. She said she is excited, but also worried and a bit scared. She said she knows she might not experience the greatest things all the time, but “this will definitely put things in perspective for me,” she said. “I know it will be something that will change me.”

Julia Integlia, who works at Two Lights General Store, is waiting for a call from the American Red Cross that would give her 24 hour warning before being sent to assist in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.