RUTLAND, Vt. (AP) – The American Red Cross has recruited at least 350 new volunteers in Vermont to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.

They will get quick training in the rigors of emergency shelter life before they are dispatched to the Gulf Coast states.

“It is the most people we have trained at one time,” said Elizabeth Finlayson, executive director of Central Vermont Red Cross in Rutland, which has recruited 130 new volunteers.

The Northern Vermont Chapter in Burlington said it has enlisted a similar number. The Green Mountain Chapter in Bennington is training about 90 fresh volunteers and expects to continue to hear from people interested in helping.

It’s people from all walks of life,” said Chief Operating Officer Deborah Peterson.

“The commitment is amazing. When you asked them why, they simply say I cannot watch the pictures on the television without doing something.”‘

The volunteers will work in shelters providing food and assisting victims of the hurricane.

“It is a tiring, hard, difficult assignment for folks, for everybody,” Finlayson said. “There is no electricity, no air conditioning, no potable water,” and some if not all the shelters are in the worst areas, she said.

“You have to be in pretty sturdy shape,” she said.

Volunteers could be without water for showers for the two to three weeks they are there, Finlayson said.

The Central Vermont Chapter had planned to recruit 25 people, but since the need has been so great the group multiplied its recruiting effort, she said.

It will be an extended project for the Red Cross, both in Vermont and nationally, to provide displaced people with food and shelter, at least over the next few months.

Of a handful of people already sent south by the Rutland chapter, some are at shelters in Biloxi, Miss., Montgomery, Ala., Gulfport, Miss., and at the Astrodome in Houston.