|
Journal of a First-Time Volunteer
Written by
Katie B. Goode
, Special to Redcross.org
Tuesday, September 13, 2005 — September l, 2005 — In flight — Somewhere over Arizona.
It seems like just another flight anywhere to visit friends, relatives, do a little business. But nothing is the same about this Continental flight direct from Sacramento to Houston. Anticipation. Anxiety. What to expect? What exactly will I be doing, where will I be working? Will I be up to the job assigned to me in Public Affairs as a volunteer from our Western Nevada County Chapter of the American Red Cross? Can I deal with the overwhelming amount of desperation and despair wrought by a hurricane with the almost whimsical name of Katrina?
Katrina. The name my mother called me when she piled my long blonde braids on top of my head. But this Katrina doesn’t conjure up the friendly image of a European milkmaid. This Katrina has left hundreds, perhaps thousands dead; and shattered the lives and livelihood of over a million people. Impossible, yet a disaster that has been waiting to happen for years to a city built below sea level.
On the plane with me are at least two volunteers from the Sacramento Sierra Chapter of the Red Cross. One of them is a dynamic young woman, a Red Cross employee named, ironically, Barbara Bush. “Barbara Ann Bush,” she emphasizes. This particular irony is intensified as we’re flying deep into Bush country and landing at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in just about two hours.
I’m one of the lucky ones who have the time right now and a supportive and loving husband, so I can leave for a few weeks. It feels good to be part of a huge team all working toward the same goal: to help the people in devastated areas begin to put their lives together by making sure they have the most basic of needs: food, water, shelter, security. It’s going to be a long, long road.
September 2. 10 a.m. Marriott Hotel, Bush Intercontinental Airport.
I meet up with Nevada County residents Jan Reisback and Judy Arbuckle in the ballroom of the Marriott, now Red Cross headquarters. We’re all part of the group being assigned to Baton Rouge, La. Both look cheerful, rested and ready to go. Jan’s assigned to Feeding and Judy is assigned to Mass Care. A veteran of the Florida hurricanes last year, this is Judy’s second outing with the Red Cross. Jan’s been to big two national disasters with the Red Cross and three with the Southern Baptists.
"What’s the most important quality to have on a disaster?” I asked Jan. “A big smile,” she said, laughing. “And flexibility!”
The processing staff does a wonderful job getting a room full of volunteers out and on the road. Teams of three are announced and a flow is established. Meet your team members, pick up a car at Avis, and drive to Baton Rouge for final assignments. Jan and Judy are assigned to separate teams and depart. I watch the room empty, but my partner and I—a woman named Avery Culbertson from Las Cruces, New Mexico—are stuck. The third leg of our team, Henry, (not his real name) — is missing in action. He signed in, so we know he was there, but he’s nowhere to be found.
Maybe it was the talk by one of the Houston staffers warning us about the heat, the bugs, the snakes, and dire conditions. Get used to the idea that you won’t have a shower for weeks, she said, adding that we’ll most likely be sleeping on the floor of a staff shelter. Did Henry change his mind? “This is the time to do it,” the staffer said. “To turn around and go home if you don’t think you can take it.” Maybe Henry did.
Jan Colon, a nurse from Anchorage, is slipped into poor Henry’s spot. Since Jan is a self-described “terrible driver” whose best friend won’t ride with her and Avery is a little person who would have to get pedal extensions out of her suitcase, it’s decided that I will be the designated driver. We think about ourselves and laugh. Three women: A Californian, New Mexican, and Alaskan, in a rented car from Illinois going from Texas to Louisiana.
We finally get on our way and head east along Interstate 10. Eager to get to our destination and be put to work, we stop only for a fast food lunch and to seek out a Wal-Mart where we find some recommended items, including water, snacks, and a most-treasured commodity: air mattresses to collapse onto after the long, long days ahead.
All seems well until several miles east of Beaumont when traffic comes to a serious halt. Dead. Nothing. People stand outside their cars, patient, waiting, as if resigned to let yet another disaster play itself out. We learn that the highway will be closed for six to eight hours due to a chemical spill that occurred when two 18-wheelers decided to share the same lane. I swear I can see a swarm of locusts heading our way.
Eight more hours puts us in at Baton Rouge well after midnight. My traveling companions and I are not enthused at the thought of trying to find our way to the shelter in a strange city after midnight. I call the Baton Rouge Red Cross number and a kind staffer named Serena manages to conjure up a hotel room for us in Beaumont. Amazing.
Deciding to dine on trail mix and then crash so we can get an early start, we trudge the stairs to our rooms and quickly discover that you don’t have to look very hard to find people in need here. A woman walking her one surviving dog says she’s from New Orleans and her home is gone She and her husband escaped to their business, but deserted that when looters began to break into their building. Maybe she can find a job here in Beaumont, she says.
Another family from New Orleans is missing their adult daughter and asks if we know where to call. The manager of the hotel is letting them stay for another night without paying, just one of many kindnesses that will go unreported in the face of this overwhelming tragedy. Included in the family are an older couple, their 47-year-old severely mentally disabled son, and a couple of teenage grandsons. The disabled man scratches his face, over and over again until it’s bloody and infected. Underneath the blood is severe scarring from years of self-abuse. Avery and Jan take gauze and antibiotics to their room and his mother gives him his sedative so she can bandage him up for the night.
Later, we see a Red Cross number scroll across the bottom of the screen for families to call to locate missing loved ones. Avery runs the number down to their room and they are ecstatic. She didn’t just give them a number: she gave them hope.
We think of the woman who came up to us in Wal-Mart, offering to open her home to anyone we came across in Beaumont who needed a place to stay. “Our church can help, too,” her daughter said.
I call the woman’s home and leave a message with another daughter. We have some families for her. The woman never calls back. Maybe she’ll contact her church. If people here want to help, all they have to do is go to any of the hotels to find lots of families who would be so very grateful.
I walk to the office and other families approach, wanting to talk, needing to share their story so they know that someone will listen and cares. Do I know where they can go, what they can do?
They’re the dazed faces of strangers, yet they’re our mother, sister, grandmother, brother, friend. Disaster, in some form or another, could happen to any of us. And I guess it’s just a preview of what’s to come when we—like so many volunteers following us— arrive in Baton Rouge.
|
