There are ways to describe the numbers of participants in the Ramer Twins Memorial blood drive held Friday at the Andalusia, Opp and Monroeville locations of Superior Bank. One might be “record-breaking.”

Tara McClung, an employee at Superior Bank who helped organize the blood drive, said she’s never known of the Red Cross to run out of bags during a blood drive in this county, but that’s just what happened in Andalusia.

“As past (Red Cross) chapter chair, I’ve never known them to run out of bags,” she said. “We had 112 people register in Opp. The Red Cross did not bring the staff to collect that amount of blood. We were only able to collect 35 pints in Opp.

“We collected 36 pints in Andalusia, but they had to turn people away because they didn’t have any bags left. Some of the people that actually got turned away in Andalusia went to Opp.”

McClung said about 75 people have been placed on a callback list and the Red Cross will reschedule another drive in a couple of weeks to allow those who signed up but did not get to donate a chance to do so.

“The Red Cross set a goal of 21 pints of blood for the Andalusia location, 17 for the Opp location and 17 at our Monroeville office,” she said. “We wound up with 19 at the Monroeville branch.”

McClung said she spoke with a Red Cross regional director, who said she had never seen a turnout like this in all the time she has worked blood drives.

“This was a great success,” McClung said of the 91 pints collected.