Lingering Impressions

Chaos after Katrina

Chapter 3

Chaos

No one is in charge.  There was a person in the office we had.  I think he lasted 2 days.  No one had any experience for anything of this scale.

The paid staff was sending food into the arena through catering services, so no one was hungry.  Some of the volunteers had divided the floor into areas and each one had a section.  Blankets arrived and more cots as people just kept coming. Many  of these people needed wheel chairs and as we only had a half dozen, as soon as we took some one to a bed, the wheel chair had to be returned to the entry door.  We had a triage area with volunteer doctors.  As many were ill from their experiences and most had lost any medicine they needed, the line was long.

We had one lady who stood at one entrance and just answered questions.  After a few days, we had two ladies arrive from Canada, Red Cross volunteers, and for the first time we felt we had some supervision.  I approached them once with some information that I thought head quarters needed for a problem.  They informed me that paid staff didn’t talk to volunteers and I will relate a story concerning that later.

Information booths begin sitting up on the upper levels of the stadium. These were mostly government agencies and there was always a line.  The US Post Office had set up a post office on the outside.  Many of these people were on social security or welfare and even pensions.  They had no way to receive their checks until the post office was set up.  But you couldn’t get mail without identification and most of the people there had fled the rising waters without anything.

Out side the stadium it looked like there had been an attempted prison break.  City and state police had set up command centers and literally hundreds of officers were present.  Every entrance had a guard.  As I had reason to be outside on occasion, I kept asking if any one knew a method for getting identification for the survivors so they could receive mail.  Eventually an officer suggested a solution and this was the information I mentioned earlier to the Red Cross ladies. 

I would walk across the floor for some reason and before I could  get across, I would be stopped for information.  Then I would try to find some answers, but before I would get very far, someone would catch me. 

Sometime on the first day or maybe the second, a man caught me and wanted to know if I was in charge.  I said no to which he replied that the others he had talked to said I was the one to get answers from.  So, I asked what he needed.  He went on to explain that he had a large laundry service in Houston and that if I would allow, he would bring in racks of towels.  Then if I would arrange every morning for all the dirty towels to be picked up along with the clothing that had been discarded, he would arrange a pickup, leave clean clothes and towels.  He had already arranged for shared duties with other laundry services.

I lost this man’s name in the process of the events that continued to happen.  But he deserves a medal. 

Every day, the people went to a section where we had donated clothing, picked up some new clothes, went and showered and discarded their dirty laundry.  Every day the laundry disappeared and clean clothes and towels reappeared.  I never saw this man again.  But we had several thousand people clean.

We finally moved some of the people over to the convention center next door.  One day, I had someone tap me on the shoulder.  He was from over at the convention center.  He asked me,

“How do you get your clothes clean and how do you get towels?”

So I explained to him the service being provided and gave him the number of the man who had the laundry service.

The city of Houston provided volunteers to help us.  After a few days, I would have 3 or 4 people following me, running errands to help extend the work we were doing.  They would help me gather the dirty laundry, pick up sign age material at stores and many other things to numerous to mention.  We eventually had to restrict the number of volunteers.

One day as I walked across the floor on some errand, a lady stopped me.  She was in her early 40s and was there with her father.  She had taken him to the triage, left him, and when she came back, he was gone.  So I went to the triage to see if I could find him.  What I found out was that as a person entered the triage, a volunteer would write on a piece of paper, scrap paper, his problem.  Then he was taken in turn to the doctor for examination.  This was fairly efficient as the doctor could make a decision without a lot of questions.  If conditions warranted, he would be sent to one of the many hospitals in Houston.  They then dropped the slip of scrap paper into a waste basket and went to the next patient. 

No record was kept of name or where the patient was sent.  I think he finally returned, I can’t remember, we had so many fires to put out.

About the third or forth day, a young lady stopped me.  She had her son with her and someway she had discovered that another child of hers and her husband had been put on a different bus and were sent to another town.  Later, I had a another couple stop me, there teenage son had been sent some where else.  They wanted to be reunited with him.

Solutions were being sought to bring people together.  Many of the victims wanted to know about friends and family.  On about the 3rd or 4th day, an effort was made to go from bed to bed trying to get names to put in a data base so that stranded people could find one another.  A good friend of mine who was a volunteer was working with another volunteer to put together this data base on the Internet.  They almost had it completed when word came down from paid staff to cancel their efforts.

In the meantime, another unnamed angel had set up shop on one of our top floors.  He worked for the telephone company and had brought in a bank of phones for people to use.  Even more important, he had started a list.  If someone had a place to go, he would try to get them there.  He would verify that they definitely had the permission to stay with friends or relatives and then would try to arrange transportation.

He was very successful in getting places for the victims to go.  Transportation was another matter.  He had approached me on the subject.  One day when I was going over to the convention center to discuss with them if they had any transportation for their people.  As I went in to the building, some man stopped me and asked what I was doing.  I explained.  He replied;

“You need to talk to ____”

He took me to the office of the man I had met only once.  The man who had talked to us on that first night which right now seemed a long time ago.  His first comment was to the other man;

“Why did you bring him in here?”

Paid staff doesn’t talk to volunteers.  How I remember that statement.

He went on to talk to me and when I told him that I was looking for transportation for victims, he replied;

“Why didn’t you come to me in the first place?”

He opened up his note book and gave me the telephone number of several bus lines.  I called them and found out that yes, they would give free rides anywhere “in Houston“.  Most of the people we were dealing with wanted to go to somewhere else. 

A few days later, I am crossing the floor on an errand of some kind when I was stopped by a woman who held out her hand and introduced herself.  I gave her my name and then asked her who she was. 

Embarrassment!!

She was the CEO of the Red Cross although I shouldn’t be to embarrassed as they have a constant turnover in that position. 

Anyway she asked me if there was anything I needed and I started to walk away, then remembered.  I told her that I had had a couple hundred people who had a place to go and live, but couldn’t get transportation for them.  I don’t remember exactly how many, but seems that at one time we had close to 500 and considering we had probably 20,000 people in the stadium, that would not be out of line. 

She turned to her assistant and said “Get on this“. 

He immediately called a lady at head quarters, gave her my number and she was to return the call.  She did shortly thereafter for a full description of the problem.  About a week later she did a follow up call.  We at that time had one bus load ready to go to a town fairly close and a bus donate with a driver and needed $60.00 for fuel.

With everyone living side by side, children, different races, helpless, homeless, you would think that there would be fights.  Only once did I see any angry and that was from a couple.  It only lasted a couple of minutes.

Our food came in from catering services and usually was served on an upper level of one of the concourses.  We had one catering service that brought in boxed meals instead of a buffet with a serving line.  I never thought anything about it until one day while on a mission to do some odds and ends I happened to look over toward a group of people.  Under their cots and stacked against the wall were a number of unopened boxes.

It dawned on me that the meat in these boxes would spoil very quickly in the 80 degree heat that we had.  I could only think that these were poor people who did not throw out anything.  Extra boxes of food to them was to be stockpiled.  After all they were homeless.  They were at our mercy and who knew when this would change and they would be without anything.

I had one of my volunteers go around and collect the extra boxes and then had a conversation with the man responsibile for the food and we made efforts to only let one box per person.  From then on we kept a close watch on the food.  Never was there any shortage and no need for the people to fear.

I don’t know what happened as I spent a couple days in the motel with a cold.  When I was well, I was sent to Corpus Christi to help with their shelter.  They had a hundred people and all their volunteers for Red Cross had just been signed on with out any training or experience.

Before the Storm

CHAPTER II

BEFORE THE STORM

I got a call that volunteers would be pre-positioned at Houston, Texas for a major hurricane coming into the area of New Orleans.  We arrived at Houston and waited for the hurricane to hit and see where we would be sent.  The second night we were asked to attend a meeting at the Astro Dome. 

There were about 30 of us there and a paid Red Cross staff member addressed our group.

He told us that we needed to split into two groups and one group would work a shift from 6 pm at night until 6 am in the morning.  The other group would spend the 12 hour shift working during the day.  He explained to us that we would be sitting up cots that night and that we should expect a large number of people to be coming in sometime that night.  He went on to give us this advice:

“You are Red Cross people and you know what to do!”

At the time, we were unaware of the magnitude of the storm that had hit New Orleans and were not aware that we had people coming who had spent time in the Super Dome and on the freeways outside of the city.

My group would work days, so we went back to our hotel and gathered some rest.

When I arrived at the Astro Dome ( a completely enclosed football stadium) the next morning, I saw that the entire football field had cots lined up in rows.  Each cot touched the next cot and a second row was placed at the foot of the first row.  Then an aisle was left and then a double row again ran parallel across the field.  Part of the cots were already filled, the rest were filling up as a constant stream of buses brought in more displaced people from New Orleans.  Eventually, we would have close to 30,000 people in the stadium before the fire dept came in and told us we had to move some out to another location,

If you have ever been in a major football stadium, you know that there are ramps leading to different levels for people to enter and exit.  These ramps are wide and as the field filled, we placed cots on both sides of these ramps and eventually when we had no more room and people were still coming in, the homeless people would start sleeping in the seats.  That is when the fire dept came in and we had to move a large group across the street to a large conventions center.

Try to picture these people who literally had only the clothes on their backs.  They didn’t have blankets.  Most didn’t even have their purse or billfold or any kind of identification.  Women with small children seemed to be in the majority.  Completely at our mercy for food, water, shelter and any other needs they would have.

None of the Red Cross volunteers had ever experienced any thing of this type or magnitude.  And our instructions were:

“You are Red Cross people and you know what to do!”

Behind the Scenes

Katrina
 Chapter I

 We have heard the stories, seen the people sitting on roof tops, felt for those who lost their homes; but never, never have we met one of these people in person. A hurricane of tremendous force upsetting our nation as few other events have before or since. At the time, I was a volunteer for the American Red Cross. I had already served on a couple of minor hurricanes when Katrina hit New Orleans. Before the year was over, I had spent 2 and ½ months along the gulf coast. I had seen waste and in-efficiency of resources. I had seen destruction on a scale of a major war. I had seen sorrow and hope. Time and time again, I was ready to quit the American Red Cross from frustrations over how obstacles were addressed. In the end, I came to realize that no one else could do what was done except the Red Cross. I just want to share some experiences that you will never have a chance to know about unless you were there. And to start, I need to relate the first small hurricane that I worked. I don’t remember the name of that hurricane. When a hurricane is approaching a coast, the Red Cross send volunteers in advance, housing them inland out of harms way; but available to rapidly arrive on the scene after the storm. In this case, I think we were only about a 6 hour drive away. Some of us were in cars. Others were in a truck that reminds one of an ambulance. These small trucks were used to haul food and feed people along the road in front or their homes or to locate at a location for people to come and get free food. At a central location, semi-trucks had already been brought in supplies of food. These were stationed at food warehouses across the country always ready to respond. Also at this location, a semi-trailer with a portable kitchen was parked. On many occasions this was supplied by the Southern Baptist denomination of churches. A number of men from those churches arrived with the truck and it was very oblivious that they had experience cooking hundreds of meals. We would arrive in early morning and make runs around the affected neighborhoods at noon and again in the evening serving several hundred meals from each truck. This was a routine exercise and although there were always new volunteers, almost always there was some who had already worked a disaster.

We were required to take certain classes and meet certain standards and most of us had taken even more hours of training. Still, we are dealing with volunteers and sometimes, the situation could become humorous. I remember my first day when my responsible was to make sure the trucks were loaded and unloaded. We had about 7 or 8 trucks and I look up to see 3 of these trucks driven by “men” all trying to back in to one spot to be loaded-all at the same time. It they had been young males, I would have understood, but most of these guys were retired. The next loading time, I sat up barrels so that they had to come in single file and then I would direct them, one at a time into a parking space. We then were able to have three trucks loading at one time. I relate this incident because there is a person side to the Red Cross and hence, lots of screw ups.

That first night, when we had completed our tour of duty after around 12 hours, we then had to drive over an hour to our hotel. Since there were lots of other people helping and even residents of the area without livable homes, motel rooms were scare. On our second night, our group of some 20 headed again for the same hotel as we thought we still had reservations. When we arrived, we found that our rooms had been given to some one else. It seemed that a golf tournament had been scheduled months ago and the area where we were staying was outside the area impacted by the hurricane. The person responsible for our lodging had failed to notify us of any changes and had not made other arrangements for sleeping. You will see shortly how this affected us at another hurricane.

 So, we tried to contact the person responsible for our rooms. She was stationed over a hundred miles away and we found out later that she went off duty at 5 pm. It is now almost 9 pm, motels are booked, and we are in a small town that only has small towns for miles around. After a number of calls, we finally found rooms in this little town for the ladies. That left 4 males and we just took out driving until we found a small town that had rooms available. We finished our job of feeding within a week and drove back to our staging area to prepare to leave to go back home.

We didn’t get to go. Another hurricane was approaching the tip of Texas and so several hundred people were flown to San Antonio Texas to be ready to go where we would be needed. For some reason, they decided to send four of us on down to the Brownsville area. We drove down and when we went to the local head quarters, we were told to go immediately to a motel room. It seems that the hurricane had veered north and was going to hit the Brownsville area. We were given the name and address of a motel to go to. Now, remember, less than a week ago we found ourselves without a room. With a hurricane bearing down on us, we already were having wind and rain, I did not want to be looking for a room if someone else had mine. So, I gently asked, “Could I have your telephone number in case we have problems?” She gave it to us and away we went. About half way there my cell phone rang and I was informed that some National Guard members had came into town and our rooms were no longer available. !!! But she went on to explain that she had found us other rooms and away we went. The hurricane was a small hurricane and I watched out the window for a day as rain and wind kept everyone buttoned up at home. I am now an experienced Red Cross volunteer and ready for what ever will come my way. Little did I know it would be Katrina! ! !