Kim Osborne looked out the window late Monday morning, just to confirm what she already knew in downtown Houston.

“Yes,” Osborne said. “It’s raining. Pretty hard.”

It was raining Saturday night when Osborne’s flight out of O’Hare Airport in Chicago approached Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, a day after Hurricane Harvey reached the Texas coast. It was raining Sunday as she watched a Texas Department of Homeland Security helicopter touch down outside the American Red Cross headquarters to pick up a load of blood platelets to deliver to a local trauma center stranded beyond flooded roads and streets. And it was raining when disaster relief volunteers, coming from across the country, climbed into a dump truck Monday morning for a ride to one of the dozens of emergency shelters in Greater Houston so they could set up cots.

“Still raining,” Osborne said. “Like it won’t quit.”

WHAT YOU CAN DO:Here's how to help victims of Hurricane Harvey

LOCAL IMPACT:Why Harvey will hit Hoosiers in the wallet

Osborne, who this spring finished a two-year contract as a professional in residence in Purdue University’s Brian Lamb School of Communication, was in the midst of packing boxes to move things into a storage unit when the call came Friday night.

In 2014, just back from a year-plus stint as chief strategic communication adviser to the Afghan security ministries in Kabul, Osborne volunteered as a disaster service responder for the Red Cross in Detroit, “as another way to serve after being in Afghanistan.” She’d responded to house fires, but never anything close to Harvey’s magnitude. So when the call came from the Red Cross offices in Detroit, she set aside packing for a move to Asheville, North Carolina, and caught the first shuttle available from West Lafayette to Chicago for a two-week assignment wherever she was sent in southeastern Texas.

Wherever, in her case, turned out to be in a command post in downtown Houston, fielding calls from television networks, newspapers and assorted networks looking to put perspective on the devastation brought by a weather system that could drop as much as 50 inches on some parts of Texas by the time Harvey gives up.

“It’s unreal. But you’ve seen the pictures, I’m sure,” Osborne said. (She said she wishes she could give firsthand accounts of rescues on flooded highways or of the thousands of homeowners straggling into Houston’s convention center. But there’s work to be done in sharing the latest updates, too.)

“I don’t think anyone here could have imagined this, either – even people who had been through other disasters,” Osborne said. “I’ve served in a war zone. So I know what it’s like to be in a position where you have this kind of hardship around you. If I can help someone, then I’d love to do that. This is a way I can do that.”

Osborne wasn’t alone.

As of Monday morning, the Red Cross had deployed 40 Hoosiers, along with six emergency vehicles, to spend two weeks where needed in the wake of Harvey, according to Duchess Adjei, communication director for the American Red Cross in Indiana. Adjei said Red Cross officials spent Monday coordinating a volunteer intake center to expedite help for Texas and Louisiana.

“We’re trying to figure out what that looks like now,” Adjei said. “We’re going to need people after that to kind of relieve the people who are there now. In a two-week deployment, everyone’s working long hours doing a lot of boots-on-the-ground work. But after that two weeks ends, you desperately need new people to help. … We’re probably going to be looking for lots of people for probably weeks and months out.”

Adjei said there likely will be opportunities for what she called “virtual deployment,” which could include back office duties and case work that could be done from hundreds of miles away. In the meantime, financial assistance is what will be needed most in Texas.

“We just need to keep that Hoosier hospitality in the forefront,” Adjei said. “We know what this was like, on a different level, when we had the Kokomo tornadoes last year. We know how much Hoosier hospitality came out for us on that front. Now, it’s new people that need help.”

Osborne said she figures her role could shift to sheltering or distribution operations at some point in the next two weeks. On Monday, she said, everyone was doing what they could to keep up and figure out how to get people, food and supplies safely to shelters.

Emergency crews, after all, were still working 24-hour days to rescue people from their homes.

Among the numbers she was sharing with media who calls were the ones about the help needed. The Red Cross, alone – before other groups chipped in – would have thousands of slots for volunteers.

“If you’ve got two weeks, the Red Cross will provide your transportation; the Red Cross will provide your food; the Red Cross will provide your shelter,” Osborne said. “Come out and help. They will give you the training you need. … This is a chance to be a part of something that’s much bigger than yourself and to serve people who really, really need help, if you can give the time. I don’t think it will be an experience anyone will forget very soon.”

It was still raining when she had to take another call about the situation in Houston.

What you can do: To learn about volunteering for the Red Cross in the wake of Harvey, call 888-684-1441. For information about making financial contributions, go to redcross.org. To make a $10 donation, text the word Harvey to 90999.

For more: For more ways to help, go to jconline.com and click on the link to this story.

Reach J&C columnist Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@gannett.com.