In times of local disaster, the community responds, blood bank officials said. One example was when an Allegheny County Port Authority bus crashed on the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway in a snowstorm in January 1996. The Central Blood Bank was flooded with donors. Blood services groups wish they could learn how to bottle that sense of urgency. No longer able to rely on big companies for their donors, blood bank and Red Cross recruiters are going into high schools, colleges and universities, and in some cases, giving prizes to donors for their efforts.
Operators routinely call former donors seeking additional support.
The Central Blood Bank last week held a reception for Lindley and Lenz, the former Gulf Oil workers, honoring them for each donating platelets 100 times. While some may say that the competition gives donors choices, other industry observers fear that donors may just say it's not worth trying to figure out where to give blood. The Red Cross has turned to the computer. It sends out appeals via e-mail on college campuses. With more than 50 percent of the population eligible, fewer than 5 percent give blood, medical experts say.