Stories from Katrina

Preparing for the Future by Listening to Stories

Still following the lessons of the Teachers (see earlier blogs to know who I am referring to here) I wanted to do something in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita so I volunteered at the Red Cross as part of their mental health team. Once or twice a week, I went to the drop-in center and listened to people who had lost their homes in the hurricanes, to volunteers working the phone lines, and later to the volunteers returning from the field. These stories told me what had happened there, what people needed, and what I might do to help. I also learned from the volunteers returning from New Orleans and Mississippi how the work that they did changed their lives after they returned home.

One morning I was assigned to meet with people from New Orleans who were waiting to be interviewed by caseworkers to assign them relief benefits. I noticed an African-American man in his eighties, and I sat down next to him. I asked him what had happened to him during the hurricane. Somewhat reluctantly and so quietly that I had to lean close to hear him, he told me about the people that he had been living with in an assisted-living community in New Orleans. He said that before the hurricane, they had looked out for one another. The hardest part of the hurricane was that during the worst moments they couldn’t help each other. After many hours, they had been rescued by boat and dispersed to shelters where they lost touch with one another.

Now he was far away in Oakland, California. He worried about how his friends had fared. He was living with his sister, whom he hadn’t seen for years, and he felt uncomfortable in her large house. He believed that if he was able to do handyman work for her, he might have something to offer, but he wasn’t up to doing these jobs. He believed that he was a burden to her and that she resented his being there. He said that he had never wondered before where he belonged and who he could count on.
This man cried when he said that he might never return to his community and see his friends again. When I asked him if he might find people in Oakland who shared his experience, he sadly smiled at me and said that he hadn’t told anyone before about the people back home, and that speaking about them helped some. We sat together for a bit longer until he was called to the social services desk. The caseworker who interviewed him told me later that he seemed friendly and hopeful.

When I came into the center another day, I saw a young man with long dreadlocks sitting in the hall. He had come in early before the waiting room was open. I sat down next to him and asked him where he was from and how he had found his way to Oakland. He said that he had been on his own since he was thirteen. He had been living hand to mouth in New Orleans. After the hurricane, he had been sent to a shelter in Texas, but he knew that he had to get out of there. He wasn’t sure why he had come to Oakland, and he knew no one here. He said that he felt terribly depressed and that he didn’t know what to do or where to go. I noticed that he was carrying a Bible, and I asked him about it. He said that he had found it somewhere and that reading the Bible soothed him.

I went and brought another volunteer over, a woman who was a deacon at a local church. The three of us sat together and talked about the hurricane and how frightening it had been. This deacon said that her church might be able to help this young man, and she invited him to meet the pastor of her church that evening.

Later that day, I saw him reading his Bible. As I passed him, he nodded. I stopped to speak with him, and he said that he felt more cared about that day then he had in a long time. It shocked me to realize how little we had done for him and how much it had meant to him.

One afternoon, I came into the center and saw a group of women sitting
stoically and separately in two rows, waiting for help. They were silent and looked exhausted. One of the women spontaneously turned around to a woman behind her and asked her where she was from. Another woman moved over a seat to join them. In a short time, this group of African-American and Caucasian women, who had never met before and in other circumstances might never have spoken to one another, began to tell each what had happened to them and to their families during the hurricane. They leaned closer as they listened to each other’s stories, and their voices got louder and more animated. When one of them was called to meet with a caseworker, the group reluctantly let her go. In a short time, their stories connected them to one another. They gave each other advice and encouragement and even watched each other’s children.

After the first phase of the disaster was over, I was asked by the Red Cross mental health coordinator to interview volunteers who were returning from Louisiana and Mississippi. These volunteers were from Oakland, and some of them had never been to the south before, and some had not been through any previous disasters. They had little training, and they just went and did what they could. Their stories, one step removed from the victims of the hurricanes, gave me added perspective on how stories of action transform the helper and the helped.

An African-American director of a social service agency told me that she had responded to the disaster because she wanted to push herself beyond her comfort zone, even though she felt terrified before she left. She spent six days in the field in Mississippi after Hurricane Rita. At first her group lived in the basement of a Presbyterian Church. The conditions were poor but manageable. The hardest part was the cold at night, which affected her bursitis. After three nights, ten mental health workers were moved to a beauty salon two blocks away, which she said was a palace by comparison in that they had air mattresses, warm showers, and heat at night.
She said that two to three hundred people formed a line every day outside the relief center where she worked with other volunteers. The people in line had to be let into the center one by one to receive benefits. Her job was to act as a traffic cop, keeping people in line and directing them at the right time to the right person. She said that some people had lost everything, and still these people waiting on line for hours were warm and friendly. She said that even when she had to set limits, she could do it with humor. She teasingly told two ladies who kept trying to sneak ahead in line that she would be glad when she would be rid of them. They laughed together about their situation as she sent them back in line. She had many conversations on the fly, checking in with people who came back day after day. The people she spoke with told her how much they appreciated her concern for them and her willingness to ask about their situation. Sometimes she sat with people who were having a hard time emotionally. She listened to their stories and gave them support and asked them what they had done to survive the hurricane. Telling her about their survival had a calming effect.

Now back home, after facing the losses of others, she appreciates what she has. She is taking the possibility of an earthquake in Oakland more seriously, and she has made disaster preparations that she had been meaning to do for years. When she returned to her clinic, she told everyone about her experience. When one of her coworkers said that he would like to volunteer but that he couldn’t imagine working in such a situation, she told him about her anxiety before she left. She told him that she had always seen herself as an introvert and had had to push herself in order to go. She said that in the past, she would have been reluctant to encourage someone else to volunteer, but her experience made her more willing to challenge him.

Recently, when her husband was facing unemployment, she again felt confident rather than afraid and believed that he too would push through. She said, “The more work I do in the field, the less afraid I feel, and the more willing I am to challenge others to join me in stepping out of our comfort zones.”

Phillip, a middle-aged Caucasian computer engineer, spent thirteen days in the field. He thought that he would be working in a shelter, but he was sent to Dallas to set up a call center that handled payment problems for victims of the hurricanes. When his team arrived, they were met with six thousand callers waiting for payments. There were many problems with the software and the payment system. Field caseworkers had not been well trained in filling out the intake forms. Some of the forms that came through to the payment center were incorrect and had to be sent back, and many others were fraudulent and had to be refused. Moving the money to clients was difficult and frustrating. When Philip arrived, the call center had less then ten people working one shift a day. By the time he left, there were thirty people working around the clock, and money was being transferred to the people who needed it.

Phillip felt good about the work that he had done and the people that he had met. He continues to stay in touch with them. He feels that he is more alert in his own life and that he was fortunate to have gone and fortunate to have returned. Now that he is back home, he finds himself telling friends and co-workers the stories of his time in the field. He plans to volunteer on weekends, and he is ready to go again when there is another disaster.

Robert, a sixty-year-old African-American man, is a long-time activist. He has volunteered many times and gone to places far from his home. What impressed him most this time was how people different from one another came together and worked at their best. There were no leaders in the field, almost no training, and the group organized itself by rising to challenges as they came up. His team worked in the parking lot of a Southern Baptist Church that set up a mobile kitchen. In the first days after the hurricane, everyone, rich and poor, came for food. No one had food, heat, or electricity. People who had never come in contact with one another before the hurricane stood in line together. They asked each other about what had happened and how they were doing. Rather than waiting to be told what to do, the volunteers responded to whatever needed to be done. They worked as a team, trusting that if something needed to be done, someone would do it. Robert said that it is too bad that we don’t live this way when there is no disaster.

The water has receded, but the aftermath continues. The victims and helpers are dispersed, but few of the problems have abated and planning for future disasters is still barely underway. We can only hope that the stories of the people closest to these hurricanes won’t be lost, but that instead their stories will be gathered and provide us with the knowledge we will need to meet future disasters.