When hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma hit the Gulf of Mexico region of the country, demands for services and resources were daunting. Criticisms of response agencies were relentless. Images of destruction, suffering, racial tension and the worst of human nature were inescapable.
But there are also stories that show the best side of people.
Generosity, hard work, appreciation and acceptance of fellow human beings are just some of the qualities that volunteers from the local area displayed and experienced through the American Red Cross.
These Red Cross volunteers from the United Valley Chapter left their jobs, their families, the comfort of their homes in Maine to spend three to four weeks at a time with strangers in need. Employers and families did their part by lending support.
The local Red Cross chapter sent 27 volunteers to Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and Texas, according to Douglas Hoyt, executive director of the United Valley Chapter, which serves Androscoggin, Oxford, Franklin and Kennebec counties.
It’s difficult to comprehend the vastness of the area hit, Hoyt said, comparing the 480 miles of coastline to an equal distance from Boston to Shediac, New Brunswick, Canada, “and envision that coastline one to two miles inland swept clean, flattened or just a debris field.”
The volunteers, trained by Red Cross staff, helped with communications, logistics, shelter operations, feeding, casework, damage assessment, health services, mental health, and bulk distribution.
Here are some of their stories:
Chicken meal feeds unexpected friendship
Victoria Larson:
Sometimes the solution to a little problem can take care of a much greater need.
American Red Cross volunteer Victoria Larson, part-time resident of Auburn, discovered that she was able to make a difference in one person’s life beyond his immediate basic needs.
Retired from the U.S. Navy, Larson had plenty of experience dealing with masses of people and supplies.
At times, Larson was in charge of redistributing the bulk supplies of food trucked into shelters. She found smaller boxes a precious commodity as supplies needed to be broken down and repackaged.
Other times, Larson directed the washing and disinfecting of more than 1,000 cots that came in from other shelters that had closed. She also maintained generators and pumps that kept about 40 portable showers running for shelter clients.
“I was just there to do whatever needed to be done,” said Larson.
But one time, she saw a need that others didn’t.
Responsible for serving food in a shelter in Alexandria, Va, after hurricane Katrina hit, Larson came into contact with a man who complained every time the meal contained chicken.
“This guy would come in every day and ask if the food had chicken it,” said Larson. “He’d tell me every time, ‘I ain’t eatin no chicken,’ because as far as he was concerned it was a nasty animal.”
So Larson would politely give him the choice of not eating the hot meal. But the man kept coming back.
Then the obvious struck Larson.
Rapids Coliseum in Alexandria was one of the few shelters that accepted pets. Several unclaimed dogs were kept and fed in a separate building. She knew of one particular dog that seemed fated for this man who wouldn’t eat chicken.
“This guy had a huge scar across the top of his head,” said Larson. “And we had this dog with a scar across its head. He needed to eat. The dog needed to eat.”
Larson suggested to the scarred man that she knew someone who might help him get rid of the chicken so that he could eat the cooked meals. He reluctantly agreed.
When she finished serving, Larson would bring the man and dog together and help cull out the chicken for one and feed it to the other. Meanwhile, man and dog found companionship amidst a disaster that had left each of them alone.
“Those two got to be good friends,” said Larson, who considered herself an instrument of fate.
For most of Larson’s three-week stint in Louisiana, she managed various operations in Alexandria and Lake Charles. Not often did she come in such close contact with an individual. But she said she’ll always remember the man with the scar who wouldn’t eat chicken and the dog with that same scar who would.
Her preconceived notions of people melted away
Laurie Levine:
Laurie Levine of Poland served four weeks in a Texas shelter for hurricane Rita victims. A stay-at-home mom and school committee member, she often spends her time volunteering in community and school projects. But this was different. She had the chance to see a side of people that she never knew, and she is grateful for the opportunity.
“The people were so kind and polite down there,” said Levine. “The Bible Belt wasn’t at all like what I thought it was.”
After taking the required American Red Cross training, Levine was assigned to manage a shelter in a Jacksonville, Texas, Baptist church. The shelter housed 220 evacuees from Texas and Louisiana and attracted about 200 volunteers from the local community besides the six Red Cross volunteers assigned to run the shelter.
“The volunteers put all kinds of things together for the people staying in the shelter,” said Levine. “We had barbeques and live music. We took the kids roller-skating. When the church had services, I went, too.”
Levine had also heard terrible stories about the behavior of hurricane victims, about the lack of response and support from disaster relief agencies, and about racial tensions.
She said she experienced the opposite. “We served three hot meals a day and people were always so thankful.”
Levine said she was particularly touched by a woman in her 50s with three grown sons who had lived in six shelters in 42 days. She had used the money from FEMA after hurricane Katrina to put a down payment on a house in Beaumont, Texas. Within 48 hours of moving in, she had to leave again and she lost another house to another hurricane.
Levine saw that the woman was bitter when she first arrived. By the end of the stay, however, it seemed as though the warmth and support of that Texas community had softened the woman some and given her a reason to hope again.
One day, Levine recalled, she became irritated. Volunteers set out 40 pairs of clean underwear every morning. The same three or four people took all 40 pairs each day. Then she finally got the picture. These people didn’t have any clothes with them and didn’t know when they would ever have again.
“I really had to make a shift in my thinking,” she said. “It dawned on me that this was all that they had, and that they were in survival mode.”
So the volunteers continued to set out the underwear, but they started adding socks too.
The clothing came from donations from local individuals and organizations. American Red Cross supplied the food. Volunteers got to know the people they were serving.
“The whole experience has made me walk a little slower, maybe be a little kinder and to be a little more patient,” said Levine.
There was no easing into the new job
Eric Lynes:
After only a week on the job, Eric Lynes was faced with back-to-back historic disasters.
As emergency services director for the local chapter of the American Red Cross, he and emergency staff across the country were called upon to make the impossible happen.
Phones rang constantly. People needed help. People wanted to help. People needed training and assignments. Matching resources and volunteers’ skills with disaster needs caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita called for stamina and direction.
“My first week in this position, we were right in the thick of Katrina,” said Lynes, who stepped into the United Valley Chapter role on Oct. 3. “I definitely had to jump in and get to work.”
Lynes, who had spent eight and a half years working in blood services for the Red Cross, had hoped to see firsthand the emergency relief operations in the Southern states. But there was no time and too much work to do at the local office.
“I would have liked to have gone down there,” said Lynes. “But the best use for me was here.”
Besides the frenzied national calls for help that first week, an eight-unit apartment building in Gardiner burned and left 30 to 40 people temporarily homeless. Lynes had to dispatch local volunteers, who were already trained but not yet sent to hurricane areas, to the fire scene within one to two hours.
Most of the Red Cross’ work is spent quietly helping local residents deal with personal disasters such as fires and floods, said Lynes.
Staff and volunteers find people an immediate safe place to stay, assess their long-term needs, provide comfort kits complete with personal toiletries, and, most importantly, give a teddy bear to children affected by a tragedy.
“You wouldn’t think that a teddy bear would make that much difference,” said Lynes. “But for a 5-year-old kid who’s got nothing, that teddy bear helps a lot.”
“We’re always in need of volunteers,” said Lynes. “Disasters don’t happen every day, but when someone calls, we hope to make the best use of them.”
The United Valley Chapter serves anyone who lives in Androscoggin, Oxford, Franklin and Kennebec counties. Whether they make the national news, the need for resources, services and response is constant, said Lynes.
She barely recognized what she saw
‘The call never stopped’
Christle Alexander
For six years, Christle Alexander lived in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. Two of her close friends died in Hurricane Katrina, and she still hasn’t heard from others.
Alexander, a native of Maine, lives in Rumford now and works at a local floral shop. When she saw the images on television of the devastation caused by the hurricane, she knew she needed to return to her former home to help.
Alexander called the United Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross, took several classes provided by the Red Cross and was initially sent to Church Falls, Va, headquarters for American Red Cross. For four days, she took calls from people who needed everything. Once she hung up the phone, she had no idea what became of the voices she talked to.
“The phones were insane,” said Alexander. “There were hundreds of people in one building answering phones. The calls never stopped.”
Finally, Alexander was assigned to Louisiana. She arrived at New Orleans International Airport Oct. 16. Only she, another Red Cross volunteer and two airport employees were there. She found the emptiness of the usually crowded and bustling airport “creepy.”
Alexander spent three weeks in Lakeview and Kenner, suburbs of New Orleans. Her job was to go out into the neighborhoods and provide meals from the Red Cross’ emergency response vehicles. Assigned to these places because she knew the area, Alexander barely recognized what she saw.
“My first day out, I went to Lakeview,” said Alexander. “I had friends there and we used to go to their house once or twice a week for crab boils. I hadn’t heard from them. When I got there, I couldn’t tell where their house was.”
Alexander spent the days handing out food, water, snacks, meals. She dealt with people from all walks of life. Children, elderly, black, white.
“People were devastated and in shock,” said Alexander. “There were people on the edge of giving up. There were people who were hysterical. I think it was unfair that it became a racial thing on the news. I never felt in danger the entire time I was there. It wasn’t about race – it was about being poor and being in need.”
Alexander saw that these people might have been her. Her own former house was under water. She said the experience has made her cherish life and what she has, even down to just having drinking water.
“One boy wanted a dollar to feed his cat.”
Yung Szal
Yung Szal thought he was back in an orphanage when he arrived in Houston as an American Red Cross volunteer after Hurricane Rita struck.
Szal, who grew up in Auburn, was adopted in Vietnam when he was 7 years old in 1982. What he saw during the three weeks he was assigned in Texas made him sad.
“There were a lot of kids asking for food, for money, asking for clothes,” said Szal. “One boy wanted a dollar to feed his cat. So I gave him $20. I understand what the kids are going through. I understand what the parents were going through trying to feed their kids.”
Szal also spent time in Beaumont, Texas, and in the small towns of Jasper, Baytown, and Newton. He worked on the Emergency Response Vehicles (ERVs), which were loaded with meals and supplies to take to people wherever they were.
Some of what Szal saw also encouraged him and gave him happiness. Residents of Newton invited Red Cross volunteers to a high school football game and honored them during halftime.
In Jasper, the Southern Baptist Organization, which works with Red Cross across the country cooking meals for ERVs and shelters, organized an appreciation dinner for the Red Cross volunteers.
“I never thought about how people thought about us,” said Szal. “I just thought people have to get what they need and never think about us. But that dinner in Jasper was the most emotion I ever had. I almost cried.”
When Szal wasn’t handing out food and water from the ERVs, he was just talking to people. Listening to people. Not trying to be a counselor, but just trying to be a friend.
“I saw that people felt scared,” said Szal. “The kids would see our uniforms and then know it was OK. They would come out and laugh.”
Szal thinks that he will adopt orphans some day. He got the idea to become a Red Cross volunteer from his parents. They had been Peace Corps volunteers, and he wanted to be one, also. But when he saw the television coverage of the hurricane destruction, he called the United Valley Chapter of the Red Cross and asked how he could help.
“The people at the grassroots level did everything they could.”
Joe Ross
Joe Ross, retired military, has participated in disaster relief efforts for just about every hurricane that has hit for the past six years. And without doubt, Ross believes that Katrina was the worst.
Ross’ military training was in electronic engineering. His specialty as a veteran American Red Cross volunteer is setting up communications in places where there’s nothing. Phone lines, computer modems, ham radios, satellite devices – anything that will get people talking so that they can get things done.
“When we get on-site, the infrastructure is usually gone,” said Ross. “We start from scratch. I usually have a team of about 25 people and they’ll run cable in the doggonedest places. And every bit of our equipment is donated by different companies.”
A native of Wilton and known by other Red Cross volunteers and staff as “the cowboy,” Ross answered the calls when hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma hit this year. He spent a total of nine weeks in Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. He noted that Texas seemed friendly and proactive, while he described the bureaucracy in Louisiana as “a mess.”
“The people at the grassroots level did everything they could,” said Ross. “We had a group of women in New Orleans who got together to do our laundry. It seems like a little thing, but it saved a lot of time and it was what they could do to help.”
Ross also had high praise for the Southern Baptist Organization, which works regularly with the American Red Cross to prepare meals in shelters or for delivery.
“I’ve seen these men come in, set up a kitchen and have a meal ready for a thousand people in just four hours,” said Ross. “They’re supermen.”
After this year, Ross is convinced more than ever that the American spirit is alive and well. He recalled a young couple looking at their destroyed house. The wife stared in shock while the husband reassured her that they would rebuild and not to worry.
Ross recalled a family staying in a shelter who quietly set up a day care area in the corner.
“No one told them to, no one asked them to, but they did it because it was a way that they could help,” said Ross. “We had people come in and we’d give them food or money. Then the next day, they come back and say it’s our turn to help. Even if they could just sweep floors for a bit.”
But then Ross said he saw things that worries him. While in New Orleans he saw firsthand the pitfalls of corruption and bureaucracy, such as sheriff’s deputies stealing.
“People need to understand that the Red Cross is not a government agency,” he said. “But we were at the mercy of the local government. We don’t go in unless we’re invited. We’re volunteers and we’re here to help our fellow man. We do the best we can with what we’ve got. And people need to understand that sometimes we’re just at the mercy of Mother Nature.”
If you want to make a donation
There are 800 local Red Cross chapters in the United States. Between Aug. 29 and Nov. 11, 43,670 Red Cross staff and volunteers were assigned to Southern states to support relief efforts for the three hurricanes, according to national Red Cross records.
As of Nov. 18, Red Cross received $1.64 billion for hurricane relief. Estimated expenditures total about $2 billion, according to Red Cross reports. The United Valley Chapter received about $257,000 directly through the local office and more donations continue to trickle in, said Douglas Hoyt, executive director of the United Valley Chapter, which serves Androscoggin, Oxford, Franklin and Kennebec counties.
“The scope of Katrina stretched every agency,” said Hoyt. “Even with the best of responses, we still got bogged down.”
Anyone wishing to make a donation to the Red Cross can call 1-800-HELPNOW or the American Red Cross United Valley Chapter, 795-4004; or send a donation to the American Red Cross United Valley Chapter, P.O. Box 439, Auburn, Maine 04210. Donators can specify if they want their contributions to go directly to Katrina relief.
Comments are no longer available on this story