When I arrived at 6 the next morning, the citizens of New Orleans began flowing in and by the time the flow had stopped a few days later, we had 35 thousand people in the Astrodome. We began with cots side by side, head to head, lined on the floor of the Astrodome lined in rows. Then we began lining the ramps and all the extra spaces that had been used for other activities. When the flow stopped, the bleacher seats were also being used as we had run out of room for cots. Paid staff had rented an upper floor in a building next door and we never saw them, but we knew they were there. At every meal time, meals arrived. They were sufficient and came from different sources. The people who arrived, came without anything, many if not most, without even a purse or billfold. As I learned later, many had been plucked from the tops of buildings, roads... By the second day, an area had been set up with a wide selection of donated clothes. I know not where they came from as usually, Red Cross doesn't take donated clothes. I assume the city of Dallas contributed: eventually we had to quit taking donations of clothes as we had more than we needed. If you think of the logistics involved: buses to bring them to Houston: food to be delivered: doctors and nurses for the triage: clothing solicited along with whatever was happening to the rest of the refugees from along the coast, one is almost overwhelmed. There is more to the story and this time it comes from the volunteers and many others. When I arrived at 6 that first morning, the first problem was that many of the citizens arriving were in poor health and needed a wheelchair as they departed from the buses. We only had two wheelchairs available and myself and one other spent our time wheeling them from outside the stadium down to the floor and most to the Triage Staging Area. I was one of the younger males in decent shape and so my presence on the floor became a common sight. Maybe that is why when a stranger arrived and asked me who was in charge, I inquired as to what he wanted. At this time we didn't have anyone on the floor in charge and wouldn't have a volunteer in charge for some days. I didn't know at this time that the paid staff had set up an office in the next buildings, so as I had been told, 'You know what to do'... He explained that he owned a major laundry in Houston. He wanted to provide towels for our 'residents'. He explained that his company sterilized all of the washing. What he needed was to drop off a couple of cages of towels along with a couple of empty cages. We would need to take these to the areas where the showers were and then every day bring down the empty cages which had been filled with dirty towels. I gave him the ok.. I don't think he had any idea how many towels would eventually be needed, but before I moved to another shelter, I noticed that he had enlisted the help of other laundries in the Houston area. I don't know if the home office of the Red Cross had ever considered this problem, but it worked well. Each person could go over to the desk where several people sorted all the incoming clothing. They would give size and then choose from the choices available. This allowed each person to have a clean shower and clean clothing for each day, after all it was the first of Sept in the south and keeping 35,000 people clean was a major success. The offices of the Astrodome gradually filled with different government offices. A post office was set up for people to collect mail, but many didn't have any identification and so measures were enacted to provide ID's for those receiving mail and filling out government forms for aid. We had another man show up just like the laundry man. He was an employee of the local phone company and the company had installed phones in an area where people could call family and friends. Remember, cell phones were more of a luxury then, especially in poor areas. Many would have lost their phones along with purses and billfolds anyway. As they made the calls, many would find a place where they could stay. The problem was that nobody had transportation. This man from the phone company and I am sorry I have lost his name (he was a lifesaver), had found someone with a bus and with his own funds and help from friends, they would pay for the fuel needed to take people to friends in cities nearby. He had taken it upon himself to verify that there was an actual person willing to take in those who said they had a place to go. I had kept in contact with him each day following how he was doing. Then one day, after about two weeks, he said, “I have 500 people with a place to go, but I have run out of money to buy fuel for the bus. Can you help?” By now we had a couple of volunteers from the Canada Red Cross who were in charge of the floor. I explained to them the problem and asked about any resources. They couldn't help and as they put it, “Paid Staff doesn't talk to volunteers.” At the beginning, I said that there were things about the Red Cross that made me mad. But I was determined and made the trip to the building next door where the temporary offices of management existed. I tried to explain to the man at the door and he took me in. I watched as the man in charge came unglued yelling at the man who had brought me in as to why I was there. Then he calmed down and I told him my story. He pulled out an address book and gave me the number of a bus company telling me they had already made arrangements. When I was outside I gave the company a call only to find out that it was the city bus line and they would give free rides anywhere in town. Within a day or so, I am walking across the floor of the stadium on an errand of some sort when I was stopped by a woman. She introduced herself and I came face to face with the CEO of Red Cross who wanted to see the situation firsthand. “Is there anything you need?” “We have 500 people with places to go and no way to get them there.” She turned to her executive secretary and told him to call someone who he put me on the line with. I told her the problem and then went on my way. Two days later this lady called me and asked if anything had happened yet and I told her no. But within a couple of days, any person displaced by Katrina would have either a bus ticket or airplane ticket paid for to take them where ever they wanted. By now three weeks is up and normally I would return home. But the tour of duty was expiring for most of the other volunteers also and there was no one at the shelter in Corpus Christi with any training, so I moved over there. Within a week another hurricane was approaching and this time the fear was Houston or possible Corpus Christi would be hit. I was sent immediately to San Antonio. By now, the Red Cross has learned much and within a day or so all the people in the shelter at Corpus Christi and to the best of my knowledge, Houston, were moved to San Antonio. Some way or other, three large shelters were established, volunteer staffing, nurses, food and bedding along with housing for the hundred or so volunteers and it happened. Within hours of my arrival I was transporting nurses on different shift to three different shelters. At the end of 5 ½ weeks, I was wore out. Without a break and many 10 or 12 hour days, I went home. But I would go one more time to the Katrina hurricane disaster, this time to Gulfport. At Gulfport, there were one hundred feeding trucks. Again my job became one of helping then get organized, loaded and on there way to distribute food. With 2 months since Katrina, we had people coming and going every day because they had put in their 3 weeks. Each truck had to have a certified driver and on any day the driver would just not show up as they went home. In addition, each route had to have some one on board who knew where to go. After the lunches were served, the trucks trickled back in depending on the length of their route and many were as late as 5 or so. Each truck had to have all the food containers washed and sterilized and taken back to the food preparation area. As you can imagine, one hundred trucks took time. Each day as we left our staging area, we would pass another feeding truck some distance away. It was a Salvation Army truck. It brought home that to furnish help on the scale that we did, it would take more than churches and the Red Cross did things few others could including the government. I think of how when I down there the last time, the government still had mobile trailers sitting in Ark where they would eventually rot away. I thought of how the Red Cross was able to furnish 30,000 cots and food for all as they poured in from New Orleans. A lack of government control and lots of volunteers made an effective machine. When my shift was completed, I would get a ride back to where we were staying. On most of my campaigns, we had stayed at a motel. But this time we had over 300 people and the hotels had been wiped out by the storm, so our turn came to stay in an abandoned Army building. This time we were on cots next to one another. A couple of semi-trailer trucks from California with portable kitchens were there to serve us. The same trucks were used when firefighters fought fires and food was ample and good. After helping load the food trucks, I would ride a route so I would know the territory in case of shortage of drivers. One area I rode many times. It was a short route and we passed many homes that still had not been worked on. I remember one which was elevated on pillars. The middle of the house had been completely blown away and one could see all the way through. A lady lived there and it was apparent repairs were slow. Across the street and nice house with little outside damage (it would have been flooded so all sheet rock would have to be removed for mold control) and in the yard was a 15 ft sail boat. Where it had come from was any ones guess. It was not uncommon to see boats in the tops of trees. As we went through other areas, we would see some blocks where there was nothing but stacked wood from destroyed homes, others where houses had floated across the road and I remember one concrete slab with nothing remaining. Someone had found the steeple that had been on the church that was there and had brought it back to sit on the concrete slab. This route always ended near the ocean front where a man was trying to rebuild. The water had been 60 ft deep over his house and of course nothing was left. He and the rest of the family would scrounge around looking for 2x4's and with nails he had found they had a frame of sorts started. The last day I was there, he was very happy. They had found a large tarp and he had it nailed to the frame to give some protection from the wind. He told me of two sisters who had not left in time and had to climb a tree to stay above the water and ride out the storm. They lived. There was a father who had not left in time and he climbed a tree with his two children to escape the storm. It has been 10 years and I can remember even more details as though it were yesterday even though I am not sure where I was even living at the time. The pictures in my mind just won't fade. I suppose that the father still sees his children as they were swept away from him.
===============
So, where did those 35,000 cots come from? Part II, Katrina cont…
When I returned the next morning at 6 AM to the Astro Dome, evacuees were already flowing in the door and cots had already been set up by the night crew (see the first part HERE). They would continue to come until we had 35,000 evacuees from the Katrina hurricane. Never did I see a person come in but what there was a cot for them. I often wondered where did these cots come from. I know that at the unloading dock there would be a semi-trailer sitting there full of cots. I assume the Red Cross had these staged somewhere so they could supply shelters across the nation as needed.
The day came when there was no more room for cots. Every ramp, every nook and cranny, every storage space had a cot. The evacuees who came in after the supply of space for cots ceased, ended up sitting in bleacher seats, my guess was about 5 thousand evacuees. After a week and a half, the fire marshal mandated we remove some of the evacuees. There was a convention center next door and we moved about 15,000 evacuees over there. Of course, there was a cot for everyone.
I don’t remember if breakfast was available that first day, but by noon food was delivered. Many, if not most of these evacuees, had been at the Super Bowl and/or on the highways without food or water. From that day forward, meals were served every day without fail. As I arrived at 6, I had breakfast and then lunch along with (I always ate last) the evacuees there. I can’t imagine the efforts it must have taken to have a large amount of food delivered and from day to day, not knowing how many more evacuees would come through that door. The food came from various sources and there was a variety, and it was good.
During the first night, a triage had been set up and already the ill were being looked after. As bus load after bus load arrived, there seemed to always be one who needed help. We only had one wheel chair. At the time, I was 65 and in decent shape. I rode a bike 10 or more miles a day full blast, went dancing every night, so for me to push a wheel chair took little effort. Now picture that when buses arrived, they saw me there with a wheel chair. Then as I wheeled them over to the triage on the other side of the stadium, all the evacuees already bedded, saw me. We did get two more wheel chairs in a couple of days. They just magically appeared.
Sometime on the first day, a man walked down a ramp and wanted to know who was in charge. Now, remember, we were told that we were Red Cross and knew what to do. At any rate, no one was in charge and I didn’t even have a phone number, let alone know where the man was that had brought us in the night before. 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 racks of dirty towels to be brought down to the ramp to be picked up along with the clothing that had been discarded, he would arrange a pickup, leave clean clothes and towels. He explained that as a commercial laundry, they sterilized their laundry. I gave him the okay.
I now had a job of making sure that the dirty towels from all four of the shower locations were brought down for this man. Of all the things that I will explain that just seem to materialize out of thin air, for some reason, clean towels were not on management’s list. I know, because we finally moved some of the evacuees over to the convention center next door. A couple of days later, 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 evacuees showed up at the center without anything except the clothes on their back. Many, if not most, didn’t even have a purse, a billfold or any type of identification. They had been in the heat of New Orleans for several days without showers or clean clothes.
Again, as by magic, a section appeared with clean clothes. Red Cross volunteers wear a red vest so they can be identified. This section was manned by volunteers, but not trained Red Cross. They sorted clothes by size and when someone came up to their counter, after asking for a size they could give a choice of colors, design, shorts or jeans and so on. How the Management of Red Cross had managed to get clothing donations within the first day and set this all up boggles the mind. But by the first day, the evacuees were fed, clean and had a place to lay their head, as fast as they came in.
We were supposed to each one take a section on the floor and be responsible for those in that section. I guess because I was busy the first few days and as I explained before, I was a familiar face. I could not walk across the floor without someone stopping me for some reason. Seems I was always putting out fires. Never did I have an area unless you count the thousands who were on the ramps and nooks and crannies of the rest of the stadium.
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, their problem. Then they were taken in turn to the doctor for examination. This was efficient as the doctor could make a decision without a lot of questions. If conditions warranted, the evacuees 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 explained this to the young lady, then went on to other fires. A few days later, she tapped me on the shoulder. Her father was back feeling fine.
About the third or fourth day, a young family stopped me. Their son had been put on a different bus and sent to another shelter. I had to explain that we didn’t have any way of performing a search and didn’t even have a way of knowing which shelter he had been sent to. I had to turn and go my way as my eyes were beginning to water.
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 headquarters might need 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 were beginning to be set 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 evacuees 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 evacuees there had fled the rising waters without anything.
Outside 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. We never had any contact with the officers as they remained outside and we had no problems. As I had reason to be outside on occasion, I kept asking if anyone 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.
The city of Houston provided volunteers to help us. After a few days, I would have 3 or 4 Houston volunteers following me, running errands to help extend the work we were doing. They would help me gather the dirty laundry, pick up signage material at stores and many other things too numerous to mention. We eventually had to restrict the number of volunteers.
Solutions were being sought to bring evacuees 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 evacuees 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 evacuees to use for free. I had a cell phone, but never saw an evacuee have one. 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, I was going over to the convention center to discuss with them if they had any transportation for their evacuees. As I went into the building, a 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 evacuees, he replied;
“Why didn’t you come to me in the first place?”
He opened 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 evacuees 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 too embarrassed as they had a constant turnover in that position at that time.
Anyway, she asked me if there was anything I needed and I started to walk away, then remembered. I told her that I had five hundred evacuees who had a place to go and live, but couldn’t get transportation for them.
She turned to her assistant and said: “Get on this “.
He immediately called a lady at headquarters, gave the phone to me so I could explain the problem. Two days later she did a follow-up call to me wanting to know if anything had happened yet and it hadn’t. We at that time had one bus load ready to go to a town close and a bus donated with a driver and needed $60.00 for fuel. In Part III, I will explain how the Red Cross solved this problem.
With everyone living side by side, children, of different races, helpless, homeless, you would think that there would be fights. Only once did I see anyone angry and that was 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 evacuees on one of the ramps. 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 evacuees who did not throw out anything. Extra boxes of food to them were 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 given to me to help go around and collect the extra boxes and then had a conversation with the man responsible 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 evacuees to fear.