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Hurricane Ian could disrupt blood supplies, organization says

A nonprofit that supplies blood to area hospitals is asking people to make donations before Hurricane Ian potentially disrupts supplies.

Hurricane Ian is projected to strike Florida on Wednesday, by which time it could be a Category 4 hurricane with winds of up to 140 miles per hour. By the time it hits southwest North Carolina, it’s expected to be downgraded to a tropical depression, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Susan Forbes is a spokeswoman for OneBlood, a nonprofit that serves more than 250 hospitals across the Southeast, including North Carolina. She’s urging people to donate as part of their preparedness plans.

”When you see a hurricane coming, it’s even more important that we bolster the blood supply," she says. "Once the storm hits, there may be parts of our service area that won’t be able to operate should it get really bad like they’re anticipating.” 

Forbes says all types of blood are needed, but donations of O-negative and O-positive are most helpful.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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