Shoot

The

Wind

 

An

Eye-of-the-Storm-Witness

Account of Katrina & Rita

 

 

by CRISIS CORPS Volunteer

A. D. Thompson, RPCV

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Horresco Referens

Lacrimae Rerun

 

“History is the truth that in the long run becomes a lie.  Whereas myth is a lie that in the long run becomes the truth.”  -Cocteau

 

“God provides the wind.  Man must raise the sail.” –Saint Augustine

 

“Night was close to her face.” –Nadine Gordimer

 

 

This book took me two days to write, two months to live, two months to avoid, two seconds to regret, two lifetimes to forget.

 

 

This book is horror, confession, myth, true crime, science fiction, gonzo journalism, fait divers, epic.  Read it.

 

P.S. All the names are fictitious, including mine and yours.  The places are as real as they come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an ancient goddess named Kali.  As she spins her tendrils expand, strings of fate, slender sharp tentacles tangle, reaching out to touch the world.  They stir the dark waters.  They mix it in the earth red and black and yellow and clutch at trees, throw in foul wet wood.  The very air they churn and electrify.  Strands whip out everywhere from the great eye that sees all and discriminates nothing.  One life it seizes and another it leaves alone- why?  It swells, rises and subsides, has its own fierce rhythms and heeds none other.  It is beautiful in a way; let’s tell the truth.  But only the liars say it cleanses.  It leaves behind chaos and fear and debris.  Pieces of everything it scatters to the six directions: photos, armchairs, plants, pliers,  children’s shoes, knives...  All lay in the dank mud afterwards.  Bugs breed.  Kali laughs.  Henceforth her new name shall be…

 

Katrina.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fade to Black.

 

Kzsgh;’hdgf shtkl hoi 0y6 08=1y36=98

POWER FALURE

 

I cannot write to you anymore. 

You must take over.

Where is everyone???

What is that noise noise?

What is this feeling rising rising rising?…

Do you read this by candle light now: feeble, flickering, smoky, smelling, measured out?

Snuff.

 

All dark.

Alone.

Alive?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Many of Us Will Go?

From COLUMBIA, SC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

External Validity???

 

Sitting in class.  Masters of Social Work year two: Organizing, Fundraising, Research… In each class we pause to pay lip service to what Katrina means to our profession.  It exposes the inequities of our society, etc.  Too true.  So what shall we do?  “Okay, now to Chapter Four: External Validity.”  What the..?!

 

I called Red Cross right away.  Spotted the ad in the paper.  I do not own a TV.  I admit I  missed most of the images you all have in your heads from CNN.  I have my own to share.  But I read the news and listen to NPR and hear the call for HELP.  Deep in my bones I hear it somehow.  Sure we had raised money for Granada, the Tsunami, other disasters.  This one for some reason grabs me hardest.  I know I must go, damn the cost.

 

On Labor Day, more than a week after Katrina hit, I went to an all day training Red Cross held in the Auditorium of our State Department of Health Building Complex.  It was basic, an introduction to what is called Mass Care.  I looked around at the others- young, old, men, women, different races and ethnicities.  It was inspiring.

 

“How many of us will go?” someone asked.  There were three hundred of us. 

 

“All of you who are ready,” answered our facilitator, a veteran of many disasters, a local.  Many volunteers were once victims themselves.  He explains that Red Cross needs four thousand volunteers right away.  Most stay only two to three weeks and then must be replaced.  The time limit is real and to be respected.  They are still sending volunteers to New York City since 9/11 apparently.  This impresses us all into silence.  But the reality will be seen later.  Many were called up locally.  Few went to the Gulf Coast.

 

Our facilitator takes questions seriously, but has a sense of humor thankfully.  The jokes are not worth repeating but modeled an important skill in surviving disasters psychically.  The questions were sometimes amusing too, although earnest.  I did not laugh out loud as one accustomed to strange deployments myself.  I know there is no guessing which person will crack under the strain.  Those concerned about packing toiletries may end up being some of the most stable volunteers.  There is almost no telling.

 

The video is not too bad.  There are famous folk in it: the Baldwin from Backdraft for instance.  More importantly there are many real disaster scenes, not those seen on the news which are most dramatic, but simple ones about shelter, feeding, medical care and counseling.  They have alas all been erased in my mind now along with whatever feelings of apprehension or excitement I had then, eclipsed by the experiential reality to follow.

 

There is lingo to learn of course.  Some he explains.  Some he does not.  Our facilitator stops the video often for questions.  An ERV is an “emergency rescue vehicle”.  They are like a cross between an ambulance and an ice cream truck.  Teams of two drive the food to shelters and around routes where people (henceforth clients) await hot meals. He warns us to be careful backing them up: there have been fatalities.  There is a driving course.

 

Red Cross cars are not for your individual use, he warns us.  Do not take from the boxes of phone cards.  You are stealing the donated dollar.  Do not talk to the press.  There is someone designated to do that.  One volunteer told a local TV news crew they needed cereal or something and then they were swamped with it, whereas in fact they had other more urgent needs.  What made this advice so useful was that one detected a real life story behind each bit.  It is in this vein I hope to write this book, offering my own real experience and the real life stories people shared with me.  Otherwise one gets bogged down in a morass of editorializing and procedure as fetid and sticky as the sludge Katrina left on Gulf State streets and floors and everything else it touched.

 

*

 

“Here’s a name tag.  Fill it out.  Follow her…” to a card table behind a line of zombie like survivors.  Forms on the table.  That is all the introduction I get.  The thin, thin woman on walkie-talkie in khaki shorts with clipboard, severely pulled back frazzled red hair and pale wan unsmiling face is clearly the boss.  The larger older woman who conducts me through the maze of people, stations, halls and stairs is all a blur, as are almost all the other volunteers and the first few clients, cases, forms, cards…

 

On my way from my work at HABLA in an old elementary school on Pickins Street that the University uses as the Center for Child and Family Studies, I notice some commotion, police directing traffic. I only notice because I am irritated, tired after a shift interpreting Spanish for Social Services in the Center and I want to get home.  The center of the mess seems to be the Armory building with its triptych flagpole, a building I had barely noticed before.  Faded letting in the masonry reads: Navy and later I will jokingly call it the Old Navy as rows of cages upstairs now hold piles of donated clothes, shoes, and sundry.

 

Later that evening I get the call to go do case work for Red Cross at their Intake Center on Pickins Street.  Do I know the place?  My girlfriend runs me over there and ends up staying and volunteering herself, just as I had roped her into going to the training.  Red Cross however never successfully deployed her.  It becomes apparent later that the local chapter lost our paperwork for a while.  Carolina Cares is the newly formed organism formed to coordinate the effort.  Almost all local agencies are there in one spot for clients.  We end up in the end receiving thousands of evacuees from New Orleans. 

 

Note the layers and levels beginning to surface: Red Cross as distinct from Carolina Cares.  Later another dozen agencies come in to the mix.  We volunteers were often caught in the mess, so imagine how frustrated our tired clients must be.  And this is in only one of the affected states.  Then there is the federal level.  In Louisiana it is worse.

 

It must be said that I had not heretofore been impressed by social services in the state of South Carolina.  I worked with refugees and immigrants and found official reception very frosty compared to the usual warmth of Southern hospitality.  Imagine my surprise then to walk in the doors of this edifice, past the cops and smokers, and be greeted by a fruit arrangement.  Every client family had a “shepherd” (great idea, unfortunate choice of nomenclature) to take them around.  Many clients had flowers.  Kids had toys.

 

There were halls around a large central room.  To the left was Red Cross, Office for the Aging, a nursery.  In back were shower rooms.  In the main room were many casework computers.  Somewhere too were phones and computers for clients to contact loved ones and register for FEMA.  To the right was an information window, housing, a nurse’s station.  Upstairs they had places to apply for Medicaid, Family Independence (Welfare), Food Stamps, Social Security, Identification Cards.  The Red Cross “case work” room was in the back corner.  By the time they reached us they were exhausted.

 

Keep in mind I got the call that first day around five or six in the evening.  I was there past midnight processing clients.  We started again at eight the next morning.  What we offered them was a CAT card with cash on it, the amount depending on family size.

This was to tide them over cash wise until FEMA came through (good luck!) or other employment, sustenance, etc. was secured.  Sound simple?

 

In some ways it was.  I was thankful when Red Cross briefed us eventually that an example was made of a family of four.  Looking at them you see mom and two children.  On the paperwork you read father: deceased, dated yesterday.  If the mom insists they are still a family of four, that is to say she is not there yet accepting the situation, we were told to give her an award for a family of four. 

 

“Don’t make a big deal over it.”

 

That was the best advice I ever heard!  If only it were always so.  Other agencies too were waiving many usual requirements, expediting the process.  I am convinced the savings in time, burnout, training, etc. more than compensate for whatever duplications in benefits resulted.  But there were complications.  We were always waiting for more cards and then eventually they did run out.  After that we had to write Purchase Orders for specific stores.  Some stores limited us to certain locations or other things, therefore we wrote them all for BiLo (groceries) and Kmart (clothes) who were more flexible.

 

So that was the basic job.  We just needed to gather a little information on each client, write a few numbers in on their forms and send them on their way with their “shepherd” to their next stop or the hotel if they were lucky.  There was hot food in there somewhere too!  But I never got a break to go find it.  I sat, watched a case or two, grabbed a pen and started saying yes to the random people asking me if I were available.

 

*

 

“What kind of music do you like?”

 

I don’t remember how I got the conversation around to this.  Maybe I mentioned my own travels in Louisiana before.  Let the line grow.  I want to know.

 

“Jazz,” the man says.  I start to tell him about Mac’s on Main owned by jazzman Fatback and location of the best peach cobbler in town.  Fusion, Be-bop, no Dixieland though…

 

“I love peach cobbler!” the man smiles at last.  I could not stand the vacant stare.  Was it him or me?  He is missing a tooth, marked.  Louisiana is a poor state, no mistake.  I am missing a tooth myself and as a social worker I should know the system.  But unless you can get to Mexico for dentists and Canada for meds you cannot afford to wait to save a tooth.  Out it comes!  True too our clients are mostly Black- but beware assumptions!  In this way Columbia, SC is an accidental good match for many of these folks: we are majority African American with a slow pace of home-cooked, gospel-music life…

 

They class up the place though.  Minutes to grab their stuff and most men have hats on!

Gentlemen’s caps.  Kangols.  Now that’s style!

 

“I want to go,” his wife says.  She is falling asleep at the table, picking at the contents of a plastic box of cooling salty greens and fried chicken.  She has such bad bug bites all over her I tell her “shepherd” (from some church or another) to take her to the nurse while I finish with the husband.

 

“Do you have any injuries?”

 

“Dog bit me in the hotel I was staying in.  No, I didn’t go up to pet it.  It just come and bit me out of the blue.”

 

Dog bites were the most common upper body injury.  Most frequently though the cuts and scrapes were on legs, from wading through brackish water and bumping sharp debris.

 

I cannot remember more details.  I saw a few dozen more clients like that.

 

*

 

This character has a big old hat and not only that a walking stick.  But he is young, white.  They call him Wyatt Earp.  He talks loudly, volunteering lots of information, some of it what I need for the forms.  He has a serious grudge against his (ex-?) wife.

 

“What possessions do you have with you now?”

 

“What are your immediate needs?”

 

“What is the state of your home?”

 

They have almost nothing, one bag, some of their documents, some not, houses gone.

In the face of this it is not surprising to me that they would assert their personalities.

But some are silent.

 

*

 

One of the most distraught is a policewoman.  She sobs and cannot tell me much.  Her sister lives in Charlotte and has come down to get her.  This does not seem to please her.  Her sister talks a lot.  They are Black middle class.  In some ways they seem better off.

Eventually I guess the deeper problem.  The sister is overbearing yes.  But the real bond is with the horse.  She was mounted police.  Her horse stayed behind.

 

Red Cross told us all the work would be on computers.  There are no computers.  The real problem I was told is not getting the information IN (logistics, basics, demographics), it is getting the information OUT.  These people- people first, clients second- they have stories to tell and we have little time for them.  Now I find the story hard to tell myself.

 

*

 

My client is an older Black man, gaunt, dignified.  The scruffy white kid at the next table is with him somehow though you would never guess it.  Luckily the kid likes to talk and fills in many of the blanks in the old man’s story.  The old man cannot read.  He nods his assent.  He is aware, alert, wary perhaps, sharp for that, wise even.

 

They were neighbors perhaps.  They were forced to evacuate.  Almost all the evacuees in that planeload were forced to evacuate.  They were not told where they were going until they were in the air.  Some had family in Atlanta.  But some were from Nevada.  They went the wrong way!

 

“My house was undamaged until the army helicopter,” one client says.

 

Another client was given ten minutes to pack, “or you go out in cuffs” they said.

 

These two took a boat out.  When their boat ran out of gas they pushed it, chest deep in water and mud, until they came upon an abandoned car.  The old man was wiry.  I imagine he could push a boat farther than I could.  The kid was broken up.  He really wanted to confess.  They took that gas from the car.  Did that make them looters?

 

Not in my book.

 

*

 

I approached one skinny dread-locked fellow sitting for a long time in the corner by himself.  He stared at me blankly.  On instinct I spoke to him in Spanish.  Many of the Latinos in Louisiana I learned were Black Hondurans.  We chatted a while.  He kept the child while his newlywed wife did the papers.  Someone was giving her a hard time about identification.  She had a strong accent- Brooklyn I think, maybe Bronx.  Her license was from New York.  They had just married and moved to Louisiana which they did not like.

 

Of each client we asked their eventual plans.  They were just off a plane, arriving in a state they never bought a ticket to, who wanted them to stay and work, but a week ago they were in homes in Louisiana, some for generations, some like this couple in an apartment they would never get safety deposits back from.  They did not care where they went.  The children played and seemed the best adapted overall.  Overall most clients were calm and helpful, polite and appreciative.  Many said they would stay if they liked it.  This easy transient nature is not just existential; it is a feature of the working class who live form paycheck to paycheck anyway.

 

I had asked Red Cross if they needed Spanish caseworkers for the Hispanic evacuees.  No, really, there had not been a need, I was told.  I wonder how many Latinos sat in the corner silently with nobody helping them until they just went wandering away.  There was an Asian man I noticed across the room who nobody could talk to; he just used the few words of English he knew over and over.  They gave him a card with money on it.

 

*

 

Other complicated situations came up.  A man came looking for his “woman”.  She had not listed him on her family card.  We had sent her to a hotel already.  Someone asked me to handle it.  It was very possibly an oversight and reuniting families is always a priority with displaced persons.  On the other hand we could not know the nature of this man’s relationship to the woman or whether she wanted to be found by him.  We could not assume.  So I set about trying to discover the procedure only to find that there was none.  I went to housing to see if we could call the woman.  Unfortunately just as an I finished explaining the situation and as the understanding gentleman in that “office” was attempting to locate the lady, down comes the man with his caseworker, a teacher by trade, who decides the man had waited long enough, and though I ask them to wait comfortably upstairs she barks at me No! and so there I had to leave the man in housing to deal with a very touchy situation.  I attempted to explain to my “colleague” what was happening on the way back up the stairs but she was confusedly apologetic.

 

*

 

This should be the story of the evacuees, the victims and survivors, clients, residents, those affected firsthand.  But it cannot help also being the story of the volunteers.  Most were untrained, sold cell phones full time, a few social work students joined us, no professors although one had been at the Red Cross training complaining that more of us from the Program did not participate.  State workers were allowed two weeks leave automatically to serve.  Students like me lost all credit for the semester at least.

 

There were some excellent volunteers.  The large Black lady who brought us CAT cards and checked our forms was full of good humor.  She did not, I think, work in social work regularly, but took to it right away.  The next morning I was sitting next to a very young woman, slight of build, unimposing but not intimidated either.  I learned chatting that she worked in Africa in refugee camps all year and was here in the States on her vacation.

 

Some vacation!  Now that’s an addict, I thought.  Our Red Cross trainer had warned us of this.  The adrenalin would carry you a while, he said.  But beware the eventual burnout later!  The far-off look in this young woman’s face told me there was wisdom in this.  She looked not quite like the victims.  She was beyond vicarious trauma.  It had her life.

 

*

 

I continued volunteering there.  There were too many cases to recall.  There were politics too of course.  All in all I was proud of my city and the job we were doing.  But there were many who could serve here without leaving their families and jobs.  I knew I was one of the few available to GO in where we were needed most.  And strangely I needed to see it all up close.  Going home each day to my own cozy life felt oddly uncomfortable.

 

In the end it was not Red Cross that called me up.  It was not Americorps although they did put a call out to their alumni later.  It was the Peace Corps that called me.  I was registered for an arm called Crisis Corps that went into disaster areas around the world where volunteers had served and hit the ground running with language skills and local contacts.  They had never before deployed domestically.  We were told we would be making history.

 

There were many plans to be made certainly.  Medical was trickiest.  I made the mistake of listing a few conditions common among us in America (allergies, lethargies…) and received a call from the nurse holding up my ticket.  I managed to reassure her, I charmed the interviewer over the phone with stories from my Peace Corps days in the Sahara, and my various causes here at home.  I went to the Adventure Outfitter store and bought fancy pants and compass watch and fast-drying shoes and other gear trying to recapture lost youth.  Ironically we used to mock such well-geared volunteers back in my Peace Corps days clad in flip-flops and rice sack.  My e-ticket message arrived in my inbox.  In less than a day I was ready to go, despite cell phone antics, my returning calls to the wrong person in D.C., some stress in Kinkos, and other assorted frustrations.  I sent a mass message to all my profs and clients and various other obligations begging out of all ministrations and communications for the next month, my term of service, took leave of my sweet, sweet understanding girlfriend at the airport and boarded a plane for…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FEMISH!!!

ORLANDO, FL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are no suffering masses in this chapter.  There is not one single client!  Yet this will be the bitterest chapter of all, not despite the absence of the afflicted but exactly because of this fact.  It was all one big waste of time, effort, money, and spirit.  It was not tragic but criminal!  In order to offset this sour note I must bring in a comic element.

 

Todd was the first of my cohort I met.  It was already surreal stepping out in the Florida sunshine to catch the shuttle to my fancy hotel.  I was geared up for the swamp and here I walked into the lobby to learn about open bar and hot tub hours! 

 

“Meet at one this afternoon in the lobby to be briefed and sworn in,” my note said.

 

I skimmed the TV in my room for an hour or so, showered, dressed, waiting for a roommate who never came, then took myself down for the meeting.  News images of the devastation was all I saw, like any other American in the Midwest or Hawaii for that matter!  I wanted to hide in that room, ashamed at myself for all I was feeling, afraid.  The attempts at corruption had already begun.   Should I blame Peace Corps, a federal agency after all?  This was unprecedented everyone said, but unexpected- really?!  The plan was being written on the fly, off the hip.  We were teamed with FEMA.  The story broke on “useless” FEMA training as I underwent it- the endless sessions: sexual harassment and human resource procedures, which Act established what….

 

“While old ladies rot on the sidewalk!!!” 

 

One of the things I loved about Todd was his sense of righteous indignation.  He had suffered much himself and so thought he understood the impatience… 

 

“A son has to watch maggots eat his mother’s corpse!”

 

Admittedly these rants were not Todd’s funnier moments.  But macabre humor would come soon enough, and the whole surreality, one had to appreciate the irony of the situation.  There was nowhere to eat at the FEMA training center.  Todd called it “femish”. 

 

Many acronyms there were to learn.  Todd like to play with them.

 

“For Ever My Amour” is how he spelled FEMA!

 

He kept me sane those days learning that if one did not qualify for SBA one could still get ONA and that failing your FIT or income test was good because you were eligible for aid but could still be unqualified for an ENA award if house damage was answered “no” when client filled it in on the Web because say they were in a rental or they put damaged dwelling as their current location because they had returned since the mandatory evacuation.

 

From behind I saw a green polka dotted shirt and a wild mane of hair.  This is a Peace Corps, I guessed!  Todd also had earrings and sandals he soon kicked up on the table.  He had done Crisis Corps before.  In fact he had been deployed to Kenya faster than FEMA got him to Louisiana from Seattle where he worked as a contractor and lived in free union with a woman and her daughter.  He lived to kayac the sound at dawn.and had artistic sensibilities.  He had been medically evacuated from Kenya, fought to return, and then had been kicked out “kinda” for something involving a girl.  In Peace Corps he had an old school thermos in which glass botTodd he transported certain plant matter.  He had once been fired from a job for farting into the phone.

 

‘But it was at a friend, not a customer!” he protested.

 

“Dan, baby,” he took an immediate liking to me… Some called us twins!

 

Scary.

 

The rest were an unmotley crew I am sorry to say.  There was a quiet fellow who served in China, often got lost, and stayed on in Orlando as a trainer after we finally left.   The women were all fairly quiet, although I heard tell later that they got much more friendly around soldiers.  In their defense two of them had been studying at Tulane and were evacuees themselves and perhaps shell-shocked.  There was another silent type named Adam, an African American minister with a wife and baby girl he called often.  He had served in Latin America somewhere.  Then there were three interesting older fellows:

Paul was a retired nature lover who had run a non-profit, a steady man and wise, Jimmy was a devil’s advocate type (and clashed cartoonishly with Todd) proud of his skills in mediation.  Our fearless leader was Randal who was a lawyer “not a lobbyist” who had the glad-hand down and I loved.  Paul was bearded, Jimmy was thin, Randal was boyish.

They all dressed kinda J.Crew.  Adam had more gear than all of us put together.   The women, sorry again, were for me, I admit it, forgettable.

 

*

 

This would not be a Peace Corps reunion it soon became clear.

 

Sitting in the hot tub one evening after open bar, Todd and I could not entice some folks from the cohort before us to join us.  They were studying!  They had finished training but FEMA had yet to get them plane tickets to a Gulf State.  Sad.  Instead we had the company of a shady contractor who knew all about hurricanes, he told us.  We went to bed early.  Hotel breakfast was served until relatively late but we had to start training at seven in the a.m. for no apparent reason.  A Peace Corps trainer took us in a minivan as the Florida highways are not safe to walk.  This same trainer informed us of our per diem (which came to four thousand for the month- this was not even salary for FEMA!) and gave us forms to rent cars if any could be found, then made us swear the same oath we had made back in Peace Corps regular service- years ago for some, more recently for others.  It is the same oath our presidents swear, to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.  I had hated the first part serving in Africa, saying it in front of my hosts and new friends, but now ironically I liked the last part in America-although I am not sure the terror-mongers understand it the same as I do.

 

*

 

Disclaimer: I do not understand animal lovers. 

 

I was attacked by a dog as a boy.  But I do not dislike animals.  I want them to be free.  I will not argue this point here.  I argued it with Todd who fired an employee for not taking good care of Todd’s dog at a work site.  Todd has strong socialist tendencies generally.

What is important is that when vehemently defending various positions, drunk I admit, Todd told me I had taken it “past people’s comfort levels”.  A beautiful phrase that and it stayed with me in many ways throughout my time of service.

 

Before I left a manager at my bank who could not help me told me the saddest story she had seen.  Everyone has something to say about Katrina.  It was someone feeding a dog on a bridge.  The dog attacked the person.  She felt bad for the dog.

 

I do not mind people loving animals, although I believe they misunderstand even their own pets.  I do not even mind the reality of the situation: people will not leave their animals.  Many folks who die in disasters are social isolates: non-English speaking sometimes, elderly more often.  They stay with pets.  Pets left behind die most often.

It is part of people’s mourning.  But they are not allowed in Red Cross shelters- for many reasons.  I am sorry but I agree with this policy.  FEMA sent volunteers to animal shelters.  That is okay by me too.  It is only one aspect of this confusing society in a situation of disaster since Katrina and in many cases before.  Loneliness can kill.

 

*

 

FEMA makes me wax philosophical on many points.  Let us stick to the facts.  The FEMA complex was terrible.  We trained in a hot, noisy warehouse.  The trainers were condescending and confused.  There was coffee at least but it was somewhere in the maze.  To eat one had to make one’s way to the mall.  We had no car of course.

 

“Clap for your partner!” our trainer commands us, after one inanely easy exercise.

 

When we were finally allowed on the computers we were not allowed access to real cases and the few Oscar pulled up contradicted him.  They told us what our job was NOT and what we could not do.  They were wrong about our access later.   Oscar said not to use his name.  He would be sued.  I protested.  They could not get us plane tickets on time.

 

We learned about hazards like gas, fire, and clients.  Many numbers were thrown at us, codes and maximum amounts.  The recoup effort matched abatement but that was all done at the NPC, none of our business.  We were mere apologists for those decisions.

We had to be detectives.  No wait, that was not out job either.

 

No hard questions were allowed.  In the press they knew as much as we did.  At the end of training a long speech was made blaming all on the Homeland Security merger (the border cops in our midst wished to bring their guns).  Another problem was lack of “leads”- FEMA subdivided at every seventh person (asexually, one supposes), but seemed to have infinite levels of separation. The purpose?

 

FEMA was to protect people and property.  It became quickly apparent that they leaned heavily towards protecting property, not people.  “Safeguarding the taxpayer dollar” was a phrase Oscar used that often made me laugh.  FEMA feared one thing- duplication of benefits.  For that reason any renter or adult child living at home who made a separate claim on a same address or phone number was basically screwed.  But I did not know that yet!

 

Oscar did explain one reason someone could be denied benefits if their case looked good.   The county perhaps had not done what FEMA said construction-wise according to this or that flood area and thus all residents’ claims in that county were summarily denied! What to do?  Draft appeal letters?  We cannot tell them what to do or say, Oscar said.

 

Whatever can be said against what FEMA evily calls the VolAgs (other volunteer agencies like Salvation Army) -and there are legitimate problems even with Red Cross which has local chapters to their credit- FEMA is in another class of evil.  Everything they do sounds evil: FRAATS and NEMIS, etc. It soon became apparent that we were supposed to be canon fodder facing the mass of their disgruntled victims, first out of the boat, as it were. 

 

Femish, indeed.

 

*

 

There was one session of FEMA training we got to miss, but I regret it now.   I went to the mall for lunch.  The bus system to get back was terrible.  I ended up waiting a long time and talked to a young Haitian woman who was homesick, just graduated high school, looking for work to support her aging mother, hated the mall, broke, on the verge of tears.  I spoke to her in my African accented French.  We laughed about pepper sauce.

She thanked me when I got on my bus at last.  The people to help, I must remember, are everywhere.

 

I had been excused from the session since it had to do with billing FEMA, how to collect money, how much for car, hotel, per diem, salary, hazard pay, who knows what else.  Although none of this applied to me since we had our money up front and would not be issued government credit cards or seek reimbursement for expenses, still I wish I had been present to learn how much these beknighted heroes, these poor complaining displaced workers, these FEMA temps were making!  Safeguarding the taxpayer dollar- HA! HA!

 

*

 

We were booked on a plane at last- Adam, Randal, Todd, Jimmy, and I.  The women had later tickets.  Paul had already gone.  Some stayed in Orlando for weeks.  We were lucky to get going at last.  I could not have stood another day in the moral morass of FEMA-world as I called that horrific Orlando theme-park from Hell!  Of course the tickets were not right, there was no plane, no seats, etc.  Somehow it all got worked out.  Only poor Todd got left (although he beat us to Baton Rouge somehow!) … And then there were four.

We had hours to wait so naturally we were shuffled through security easily, our FEMA badges shining brightly, dearly bought.  Todd sweated the FEMA security check as he told me encounters he had had with federal park rangers.  In the nurse’s line at FEMA he told me about his native Hawaiian tattoo, a huge eye in a hand on his back.  My Celtic knot armband from Buenos Aires could not compare.

 

Now here we were in FEMA polo shirts (honeybee brand, I kid you not!) with FEMA baseball caps, all American.  Todd even buzz cut his hair.  We were changed already, ushered into the waiting gates.  Todd engaged poor Adam on some point of theology and would not let him go even in the john where Adam sat trapped in a stall doing his business as Todd stood just beside pontificating.  Later Todd and Jimmy began their squabbling.  I talked strategy with Randal for our Baton Rouge excursion but mainly stood apprehensive.  I will admit I felt important.  That is what frightened me.

 

I was glad we had been assigned to Louisiana.  I would not have minded being sent to Mississippi or Texas but admit I dreaded being sent to Arkansas or Oklahoma.  There you have it.  We all have our prejudices.

 

I do not remember anything from the plane ride.  Was there a special forces agent going to secure “targets of opportunity” or did I dream that.  Where would I even dream up such terms?  I prefer to remember nothing of the plane ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Savage Baptism

SLIDELL, LA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It must be said.  Much of Louisiana looked like it had been hit by a hurricane before Katrina came along.  God willing and the creek don’t rise, it will get better if they seize this opportunity…  Even the Capital City is gray and crumbling, although it has potential and history.  We would not see much of Baton Rouge except in our lost wanderings.  We had to make our own way to the JFO (Joint Field Office) for Louisiana FEMA had set up in an abandoned building called ironically the Renaissance Center.  The contact number we called never answered.  Jimmy got a rental car somehow from the airport after several of us tried and now at last after more than a week we felt ourselves full deployed.  We would be of service at last…

 

No!  The Renaissance Center was what we delicately call a cluster-fuck.  Blackwater “security” (mercenaries from Iraq who do not come cheap) kept us well sequestered in the JFO.  Each morning we reported to a staging area where an insecure minor boss named Debbie tried and failed to deploy us for the day.  Meanwhile we were left to wander this bustling shell of a place.  The organizational chart posted there is larger than many complexes!  One time I found a tucked away little room with name cards on the table.  Who made decisions here?  It was empty.  In training FEMA told us to “manage expectations”.  Did they mean us?  We were assets to them, “bodies”.  If you could not change a situation, they said, change the meaning.  How?

 

“You kids are so cute,” Debbie said to us, “we don’t want anything to happen to you.”

One morning Debbie asked us to meet at the eating tables where she never showed.  Later when she saw us she scolded us for not meeting her on time in another place!  Was it all a sick ruse?

 

*

 

Dividers had been put up everywhere.  Of course it was no trouble to see in to an area where military figures might be mulling around with maps, or a phone bank, or a row of laptops.  Broken escalators led to a second story.  There one eventually found a tunnel over to the other side of this massive place where the food was.  Behind this was a pallet path with pillows, bedding, cots.  Upstairs a giant empty room housed men and in one corner four showers had been set up.  It was dark but the warehouse rules on returns of merchandise could still be read.

 

FEMA staff complained about the food being cold.  We had coffee, egg sandwiches, full dinners.  They complained it was not free.  Heaven forbid the locals be allowed to have some business!  It became clear the whole vibe was disgruntled.  One company of firemen had t-shirts printed that said “WE AIN’T FEMA!”

 

I reclined in a corner losing faith, but sipping my cold coffee grateful for caffeine, and wondering if I would ever be able to help anyone.  I found a phone to call out to the world for words of encouragement.  (My cell signal struggled there and I was afraid to charge it at night for theft what with mercenaries all around…)  Home was encouraging about my mission but it became clear I would pay a high price: my job there was being advertised.  Then suddenly word came: We had a job at last!  Tim had threatened to rip Dominatrix Debbie’s head off.  Randal had worked his magic and scored us a job for a…

 

Day.

 

It seems there were not enough “leads” to open a DRC (Disaster Recovery Center) for us to staff although  New Orleans desperately needed one (some of us went there to make sandwiches).  Our offer to open a DRC leadless (what difference would it make) was rouldy rebuffed.  There were rules.  So we were off for the day to Slidell on the other side of Lake Ponchartraine and to the Caravan of Hope…

 

*

 

Maps were secured.  An obscene amount of bedding was taken- just in case… and not enough water for the heat of course!  Security hassled us going out.  Jimmy’s rental fit us all miraculously, Peace Corps style.  It even had a computer that talked to you- scary.

If you stopped for gas and turned off the set route it said “no.”

 

At first the drive was beautiful, green.  Then there were more and more downed trees.  Then the shacks began to appear.  Slidell had been a train wreck before any hurricanes hit.  But there was no doubt though about their faith.  There seemed to be as many churches as houses.  Typically they were small white wood structures but they were not unadorned.  One had a huge sign with an agonizing bloody crucified Jesus on it.  It read: “Sin  Sins Sinner”, something like that.  It was scary in context, and portentous.  It was undamaged.  Those who say Katrina cleansed a sinful city are casting dangerous stones.  Forgetting the Enlightenment and Lisbon, they do not know they live in glass houses.

What they say is terrible and makes more difficult this task of understanding the chaos that strikes all faiths equally.

 

Billboards were splintered.  Storefronts were smashed.  Soon every other edifice was showing signs of damage.  The image that stands out in my mind is that of a boat tied up against the side of a house.   The water had subsided in such a way to leave the boat hanging about the height of my head.  Broken stalks stood where perhaps water towers once were, satellite dishes dangling.  Giant containers overflowed with detritus: splintered planks, siding, window frames, house frames, tree limbs, bushes, broken bicycles, sheet metal bent into eerie shapes, iron rods snapped neatly in two…

 

*

 

We see a giant eighteen-wheeler with “Caravan of Hope” painted on its side against a stars & stripes type patriotic motif complete with eagle.  It would have been more honest if it also had the suffering son of man on its side.   It was parked in an enormous parking lot.  The strip mall therein was utterly devastated.  I used to have nightmares about the “Day After” like many Cold War era children.  This looked like our worst-imagined fallout from an A-bomb.    For the first half hour after I finally found a porta-potty all I could do was walk around surveying the disasterscape.  The saddest thing was a little library branch with thick black stuff on the floor, like tar, ceiling tiles falling among the books all of them molding becoming something fuzzy and fungal.  The front was all smashed in and I heard someone say it was looting.  For books?  I wondered how many of the images of looting were actually scenes stolen by the rain and air.

 

Next I walked around the operation.  We were to work in the back busting up boxes and pallets.  Then we sorted cans into bags for families, a few potted meats, a few fruits and veggies.  It is the kind of work I love.  But I wanted to see the rest.  The recipients came in cars.  I suppose those without must starve or depend on neighbors.  As cars (trucks mostly actually) entered, the first stop was a bunch of Midwest Christian high-schoolers who asked if clients wanted to pray with them.  Only after that did they roll up to meet Randal and get a cool drink and directions. 

 

There was a stop for picking up paper goods, another for sanitary goods, a separate one for women’s things and diapers, a nurse’s station, boxes of dried goods, the cans of course, then they could pull around for a branch operation offering clothes and more of the Christ. 

 

“Camino de la Esperanza” offered “crisis counseling” on their sign but had no counselors and spoke little Spanish.  It consisted mainly in the pastor putting the arm around your shoulders and bowing heads in prayer to the risen Lord.  I am not generally one who is critical of faith-based social services.  On the contrary they have always been among those who are doing the most.  But I must admit this seemed parasitic to me.  They flocked like flies at disasters I soon learned.  They were nice.  I sat with them.  They gave me lemonade.  We chatted.  But within minutes the subject of my soul came up.  My avowal that I was Mahayana Buddhist did not deter.  After a few questions to show their complete ignorance of other faith traditions, they started in on their spiritual journey and wouldn’t I want to join them?  The Way of the Cross is alright by me although I received neither the communion nor confirmation of my Catholic family.  What I object to is folks like this one who ask me of these victims who live in sin: “How can they call themselves Christians?”  Southern civility barely kept my tongue in my head as I thought: “How can you not??” 

 

*

 

Luckily it was then that a nice Honduran lady came up.  Buena suerte too that I was there to speak Spanish with her.  She was not in crisis luckily.  She just had questions about the clothes.  I interpreted.  Then we chatted a while.  She was a hairdresser, not a migrant worker.  One of her daughters was a lawyer back home and another a travel agent- she wanted to go back there.  The complication was these children she had with her here.  They were not hers it seemed to me but she kept them for someone.  

 

The younger was busy among the donated toys.  The older, a wild-haired girl of ten or so, came over with a big smile.  She had a bedraggled little floppy-eared puppy in her arms.  She had found him during the storm, she said.  His name was “Tormenta”.  At the time I did not see it; we were happy.  Later I reflected on “Torment” as a title for this book.  When I worked for a Catholic group with Latino immigrants the faith question seemed less pernicious.  But when Evangelical sects proffer aid to other evangelical sects, all of their doctrines vaguely Protestant and mysterious to me, what is the line?

 

Whatever one believes, it seems to me, here comes another to challenge it.  For those who can listen strong in themselves, that can be a fine thing, I think.  There are dangers, complications, assumptions- but one must eat!  The Christian kids I packed cans with in back were quality persons, full or the spirit, sacrificing their vacation to serve.  But I think of the villages after the Tsunami where group after group came to vaccinate the children until it killed them- killing with kindness.  I do not doubt their intentions.  But we must assist in such a way as honors the recipient, must we not?  When I was in Chiapas during the elections that toppled PRI after eighty years in power there, the only violence that brought out the machetes was between Catholics and Pentacostals.  My personal preference among the many missionaries in Africa when I was there were those groups who did development work without proselytizing.  Surely this tragedy teaches us however that we must take the good with the bad.

 

*

 

The smell there is not of death.  It is the bayou.  I had lived in a swamp before and knew the smell well- decay certainly, some rotting flesh perhaps among the acridly recycling vegetation, stagnant water with algae, droppings, gases… Tim was horrified at one point he got a whiff of a suddenly turned breeze.  I was finishing my umpteenth Gatoraid, it was so hot! 

 

“My God, is that New Orleans we smell?”

 

I did not have the heart to tell him it was the porta-potty he smelled.  Even stench can be leant grandeur by our imaginations.  The spam burgers we ate on our lunch break I thought smelled nice.  Later though I did smell one of the worst things I have even encountered in my travels through Africa, Mexico, China, open sewers and the lot!

 

We opened the hundredth or thousandth box of creamed corn or pudding or some such.  A can had exploded therein and Botulism immediately infested the air all around.  Not just from heat and fatigue, I thought I might vomit.  Instead I sat right there and kept sorting cans.  This is what I had come to do and I was happy to finally be of use.  On the way back to the JFO to my cot however I have to admit to some bitter reflections. Surely this was not the best use of my skills.  There are many Christian kids to sort cans.  They really ought to be employing locals to do it actually.  They need the money!  Not only that but I had to go to Orlando to get trained for this?!  I was doing better work with Red Cross in Columbia before!  I had perhaps lost my job and certainly my semester for this.  And I had to get up early tomorrow to beg some FEMA flunky again for this chance!  I did not talk the whole way back.  Ruins passed by my window.  I may have dozed.

 

I did try to tell someone before I left the Caravan to change the crisis counseling sign to something more honest.  He said it was not his group!  Then I mentioned the local Food Bank crew that had come through inspecting.  Did they give any good ideas?  (It was soon to rain and everything was sitting outside- cereals, rice, etc.)  He said they were the ones who told the locals how to do it.  I said goodbye.  He did not say thank you.  That is the truth and I knew I would not go back there again.  I was running out of options though.

 

*

 

Debbie sent some of us to the animal shelter.  It was then I tried to create a coup.  I had gained the name of a local Food Bank in need of a crew.  I called the lady in Covington.  She offered an air-conditioned room to stay in, seemed desperate, wished me a blessed day.  I did try to get Randal our leader to call her.  But he was still in negotiations with Debbie to get us to a DRC.  Another one had opened and the group after us had been sent.  We were lost in the shuffle.  Apparently there were still not enough “leads”.  So I gave the Covington Food Bank contact to Debbie and she sent another crew- not us!- and again just for the day…  We meanwhile were stuck back at the JFO!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up the Rope in

BATON ROUGE, LA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adam disappeared.  We had lost another.  He went to stay across the river at Port Allen.  I was also plotting my escape.  Tim was fit to crack.  Even Randal seemed manic.  We did not fit in.  Picture a giant warehouse with fifty to a hundred cots.  They were all in rough rows.  Ours were the only ones in a little square by a pillar, our little fort.  We had not noticed at first.  We just came in, tired, and plunked down naturally.  I prepared care packages to leave for the guys.  I had gone to the dollar store before deploying and picked up things to cheer shelterees.  Now I was using them on us.  There was oatmeal, beef jerky, cards of course, a super bouncy ball, light up party sticks to help find your way in the swamp, funny books, duct tape (a Peace Corps icon) for Tim, chopsticks…

 

*

 

Then we got sent to Salvation Army.  It was just another food bank preparing to open.  We did get to give out water and meet folks at least this time.  This was good enough to keep me in FEMA’s clutches another couple of days.  It was in another strip mall, in town this time.  A quiet, hard-working man ran it.  As usual we were not given any real instructions.  We just sort of figured out how to help.  The fellow who told us about it was a U.S. Marshal and looked the part, long blond fair under a hat, stubble, hard-nosed.  There were local volunteers there too.  One was taciturn.  I tried to talk to him on his smoke break.  He was just off his hundred acre farm, used to big silent spaces perhaps, come to help out in the “city”.  He knew about hard work!

 

The work was hot, so hot I could not eat but just gulped drinks down one after another.  I could not imagine living here.  I was like a mere day-tripper.

 

*

 

I bonded with the other local volunteer while pouring water over myself.  He had headphones on so I hadn’t spoken to him.  He took the headphones off and poured water over his self and told me slowly with coaxing his horrific story.  I could never do justice to what happened to him and the calm matter-of-fact way he told his peace without malice but here goes:

 

He was in a rehab clinic, a roundish fellow with an easy smile, Black, short hair, quiet, not a leader there I imagine, but his courage showed.  They smashed their was to the upper floors as the water rose.  Days passed.  They ate all the ketchup on crackers.  They had no water.  Boats passed.  Finally he climbed down like in a movie on a rope made of tied-together sheets.  He was at the level of the water, waiting, disease lapping at his heels.  The police boat came.

 

“Up the rope,” they said.

 

“What?!  We have no food or water!”

 

“Up!” the policeman drew his gun to explain. What could he do but climb back up stunned.  They cut the rope.

 

When the helicopters came they made it up on the roof. It was not the police who rescued them.  Not all of them had survived that long of course.  Did they feel cursed or worse- just expendable?

 

*

 

Sometimes I hear people say stories like this are apocryphal, urban legends.  I heard this even from clients in Louisiana.  I cannot see any reason for these folks to have invented them, and having met them in person I tell you I believe them without doubt, and anyway I’ve seen some things myself…

 

Another fellow asked for several cases of water.  Jimmy was inclined to set a limit.  I was of the feeling that as water had no street value anyone who waited ages in line for it most probably needed it pretty badly.  This young African American man was running a make- shift shelter.  I got to talking to him.  He told me about a ten year old who was celebrating his birthday that day.  He was happy because his parents were out of the hospital.  But his little sister was still touch and go.

 

“What happened?” I asked with some sudden sense of dread.

 

“The guard at the grocery store shot them.”

 

I did not ask any more.

 

The role of security forces in disaster is complicated.  There are masses to contend with and sometimes shortages.  Some order is needed.  But the real danger is panic.  In stress-ful situations one is either escalating or deescalating; there is rarely middle ground.  I like best those forces which are helping with the deescalating.  They should be trained for this and defer where appropriate to those with the proper training.  There is more to be said on this for sure but I want to tell stories, not editorialize. The stories speak for themselves.

 

* 

 

Of course there are some shady types, but they were innocuous.  There was a family came back day after day for water.  They had a truck with a bumper sticker about Noni juice.  I asked about it, trying o make small talk as always.  It’s the only way most people can start telling you their troubles. The brother from the Caribbean sold Noni juice.  She starts in on the sales pitch.  I remain non-committal.  But hey, they are just trying to get by, now like before, the only way they know how.  It reminds me of the lady in Michael Moore’s Flint who survives by cooking and skinning rabbits.  The Department of Health shuts her down, requires an expensive special sink.  Who knows where folks get the phone cards they sell?  Who knows if the cards work?  I have met many people through life who I knew could not tell me all their story truthfully just then.  But they never hurt me, not once.

 

*

 

Car after car, truck after truck came, even after we closed down for the day they were still coming for water.  There was a Vietnamese family of twenty some. This was common for all folks now.  People Black and white took in all their kin from New Orleans.  Even the rich LSU students had their parents with them now, on curfew, I joked. 

 

They were distracted sometimes, would drive off with trunks open, through barriers not seen.  A man came to pick up for his old neighbor.  He could barely open his car door, let alone haul water.  I can only imagine how feeble the neighbor was, whether still alive by the time he drove hours back out to him. 

 

There was a postman who came in his official jeep.  Perhaps he was taking water to folks on his route.  He asked me about Carolina hurricanes and told me ours was named after his grandma Ophelia who would wake him up at night to give him a whoopin’ if he had been bad, she was so fierce-  “Whooped me onto the right path!” he said.

 

Regular life makes a semblance of going on.  Many trucks have high school football flags.  We ask about the game.  They had won!  One boy had a broken leg and couldn’t play.  That was his major tragedy.  Jimmy and I gave the kids granola bars and felt good about our selves.  It is never enough anyway.  Or is it?

 

*

 

 

I was afraid of the forklift.  I admit it.  I used a hand truck.  Another huge truck arrived with food to be put in aisles for agencies to shop at soon.  It was unclear what forms and identifications would be needed; we never knew how to answer the clients’ constant questions. This truck was from the Midwest, sent by Boy Scouts and they took a nice photo in front of it for the folks back home.  Meanwhile we had to unload it before we could go “home” to our cots.  So I used a hand truck.  The pallets were piled high with kids’ clothes and stuff.  I would have still been all right but the floor was all