“I don’t know what we ever would have done without you people. God bless you.”
“It’s hard, but thank God we’re all still alive.”
“We’re doing a little better today, but I don’t know how we’ll ever get this whole mess cleaned up.”
Hey, guys! What’s for dinner today?”
“I just hope Frances hits us instead of somewhere else. We’ve already lost everything anyway. I hate to see anyone else have to go through this.”
“They just condemned my house. I have nowhere to go. I lost my job when the hurricane blew the building away. I don’t know what to do.”
These were some of the comments we heard on our first day working with the Red Cross after Hurricane Charley.
Type rest of the post hereMy friend Gail and I were on Ft Myers Beach, Florida, a long skinny island no more than 2 – 4 blocks wide in most places. Charley had devastated the area 2 weeks before we arrived. Now, with electricity restored to most areas, everyone was trying to clear away the devastation caused by the powerful Friday the 13th hurricane. The residents of this area had thought they were safe. Then, just before making landfall, Charley had made that unexpected “jog to the east,” while strengthening to a category 4. 145 mile an hour winds and a 15 foot wall of water do unimaginable damage. Every house we passed appeared to have most of its contents piled at the edge of the street, and most houses were on stilts, so that the main floor was actually as high off the ground as a normal 2nd floor. Beach sand was everywhere. Downed trees. Waterlogged carpet, furniture, sheetrock. Refrigerators with watermarks half way up. And this in one of the less damaged areas hit by the storm. And everywhere we went, smiling people. Grateful that they had survived. Grateful to see us.
Gail and I were doing duty on an ERV (Emergency Response Vehicle), providing meals, water and snacks twice a day to the people of the area. As the driver carefully maneuvered down each dead-end street in our ambulance type van, one of us ladeled out meals into divided Styrofoam clamshell containers. The other talked to the people who watched for us coming down their street. Serving chicken and dumplings with mixed vegetables, canned peaches and a roll from a vehicle dodging downed trees and miscellaneous debris can be a challenge.
It was the first time for both of us to do this type of volunteer work. Everyone there was so grateful, and so brave, and often, so scared. We were grateful, too. Grateful for the opportunity to help a little. And we were overwhelmed – by the devastation and by the positive attitudes of the people.
We had arrived in the area the afternoon before and had been given a guest room in the home of someone we had never even met before – our online friend Nancy Goodenow. Nancy had been in Costa Rica when Charley had hit. She worried on the group about her beautiful cat, who was weathering the storm without her back in Cape Coral. When I e-mailed Nancy that we were going there to help, she immediately offered us a place to stay. Since we had expected to try to find someplace we could get away with sleeping in the back of Gail’s covered pickup truck, we blessed Nancy many times over. Nancy had worked with the Red Cross before, and was able to give us some pointers and head us in the right direction the next morning.
We were welcomed with open arms by the Red Cross people. There were already over 6,000 volunteers working in the area, and they needed more. There were many jobs to be done. The gigantic mobile kitchens were able to prepare 20,000 meals a day at each of 2 locations. People were needed to work on the ERV’s, delivering the meals. Others were assigned to other trucks, delivering cleanup supplies and water. Others were assigned to Family Services, interviewing people to determine their needs and provide financial assistance. They needed phone people, clerical people, coordinators. There were doctors, nurses, medical and mental health workers. Somehow this massive effort was being done almost completely with volunteers. Only about 5% of Red Cross workers are paid staffers. During a massive crisis like this, I assume the ratio of volunteers to staffers becomes even larger, as many local people become “spontaneous” volunteers. “Regular” volunteers, the ones who have attended the numerous Red Cross volunteer classes and are rushed to the scene when a disaster occurs, had come from as far away as Washington state and Canada. Many of them had driven the ERV’s or other needed vehicles all the way to Florida. We met people from all over the country. Many of them, like us, are retirees, who are able to be away from home when needed. Some are working people, who have an understanding with their employers that when a disaster calls them, they will be gone for 3 weeks, the standard time commitment.
Many of those who were hit by this disaster are elderly. This is, after all, South Florida. “Starting over” at 80 or 90 looks different than when you are 20 or 30. Many had no insurance. Most didn’t know where to start. And no one could find a roofer. Most were still waiting for an insurance adjuster. Some, who had been told the adjuster would call them to schedule a visit, wondered how that would be done without working phones.
During her first week there, before our arrival, Pam, the navigator on our ERV, had noticed one elderly lady who struggled down the stairs of her home to get a meal each time. Pam immediately befriended the lady and carried a meal, water and snacks upstairs to her on each of our twice daily runs. One of our jobs was to keep our eyes out for people who might be in critical need of more assistance than we could provide with a meal. When we came across the woman whose house had been condemned and whose job was gone, Pam immediately realized that she was on the verge of collapse. We quickly turned around and went back to headquarters to get a mental health worker out there to help the young woman. Everyone was working together to do the best they could to provide help for the immediate needs of the victims. The long-range needs are another thing. We all worried about people in their 80s and 90s who were going to have to start over. We worried about young people, jobs gone and running out of money, with young children to care for.
We learned a lot from our experiences after Charley. I learned that soaking one’s hat in ice water and then re-applying it to the head can provide wonderful relief from the Florida heat. We learned that it’s possible for an almost all volunteer group of 6,000+ people (from 48 states, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Canada and Costa Rica) to come together and immediately provide help to those in need. Is this what is meant by “organized chaos?” There were times when it seemed no one knew what was going on. Nevertheless, it all somehow got done, and got done well, and usually it got done with a smile. We learned that people somehow find incredible strength within themselves in times of crisis. And we learned some things about preparing for a hurricane, which turned out to be useful information the following week.
It seemed that just as we got up to speed with our jobs, we had to leave. Hurricane Frances was now threatening us and it looked like this one would be worse than Charley. It was enormous. And it was headed toward the other side of Florida – the east side – where Gail lives. As most of the regular Red Cross people were preparing to leave the area for safety if necessary as Frances headed toward us, Gail and I headed toward this new monster storm, to make her home ready for a potential pounding. Frances got on all our nerves, growing and getting nastier by the day, but slowing down to a crawl. It looked like we were definitely in the path of the storm this time. Lucky for us Frances decided to hit further north, around Stuart, Florida and then across the state toward Tampa and then toward the north. Hollywood, where Gail lives, felt very little effect from the storm, although we were without electricity for 22 hours and many were without for much longer. One massive tree was uprooted across the street. We kept watching the huge mango trees in Gail’s yard, expecting them to end up on her house. We were lucky.
Let me tell you about my friend Gail. Gail is the kind of person who is always there to help those in need. I’ve never known anyone else like her. When someone experiences a personal crisis, Gail doesn’t just say, “Call me if I can help,” or even “Is there anything I can do to help.” She seems to already know what to do, and just proceeds to do it. When her ex-husband, of many years before, had a personal crisis and was about to lose his home, she made sure he got medical care. Then, with her limited funds, she bought a mobile home for him to live in, rent free until he could get his feet on the ground, for a small rent thereafter. And, since he was physically unable to handle the move, she drove the four hours to his area in a U-Haul truck to get him moved in. When her neighborhood was up in arms over a homeless shelter moving into the area, Gail took them used clothes and bedding. So it wasn’t surprising, when I asked if she would go with me to do hurricane relief work, when she answered, “Of course I will.” Everyone should have a friend like Gail. Most people don’t. I’m lucky. I do. By the time Frances finally passed, we were bored. And ready to go back to work.
Workers were now needed further north on the east coast, where Frances had done the most damage. But people were still needed back on the west coast, which had thankfully been spared the worst of Frances’s fury, but was still trying to cope with the destruction of Charley. Gail and I loaded up the truck again and headed back west, across Alligator Alley, and went through Punta Gorda to Port Charlotte (the 2 towns that had been worst hit by Charley). As we drove through Punta Gorda, we couldn’t speak. I thought of describing it as a war zone, but doubted whether war zones looked this bad. It seemed that everything had been destroyed. I had read that 80% of the buildings in the area had sustained some damage. I couldn’t imagine where the 20% were.
We assumed we would have to drive north a long way to find a place to sleep. We stopped at the one hotel we saw which appeared to still be intact and open for business. They told us that there were no rooms available in the area. We stopped at the nearest Red Cross office and by some miracle they knew of a hotel that might still have a room. Someone made a call for us and found that there was one room left at the Veranda Inn in Englewood. They promised to hold it for us and gave us the Red Cross discounted rate. We were thrilled to find that it was only 3 or 4 miles from the place where we would be working, and that there was a great restaurant directly across the street, also still opened. After a great meal of fresh sautéed scallops, we hit the sack.
The next morning, we arrived early at the Red Cross service center, ready to work. But first we stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts along the way for our morning fix of donuts and coffee. Gail swore we would both gain 20 pounds from this experience if we kept eating according to my cravings, but I was determined to take advantage off all the things available that we don’t get in Costa Rica.
Gail was put to work the first day driving trucks around to different locations. Driving was the one job that she really didn’t want, but after all we had said we were willing to do anything that was needed, and Gail is a retired professional truck driver. She was stuck! After the first day, she was given various jobs in the office, including making phone calls to recruit additional workers from the community. I was given the job of “crowd control.” It turned out that my job was not nearly as unpleasant as its name sounded. I spent the rest of the week outside of the service center signing people up to meet with a case worker and making sure there was some semblance of fairness in who got in first. It gave me the opportunity to talk with a lot of really great people, and to hear their incredible stories. People lined up well before we opened in the morning. Some people ended up waiting most of the day. Everyone understood that the workers were doing the best they could to help a lot of people who desperately needed assistance. Patience indeed is helpful at times like this.
One elderly woman sat and talked to me for a long time. Her home was gone and she was hoping to get some help. She had her hair done up in those pink rollers that women wore back in the 50s. Spotting some people around with big camera equipment, she told me she hoped they weren’t from the TV station, because if her daughter in New Jersey saw her out in public in her curlers, she would disown her!
One 75 year old woman and her quadriplegic son talked with me for a while and gave me a copy of the newspaper article which had been written on their family’s survival. Sixteen family members had gathered in the home they thought would be the safest to weather Charley together. In the darkened house, one of the women got everyone into the internal hallway as the worst of the storm hit. The pool cage blew off. The glass doors began to buckle. Then they saw light and felt a breeze. The roof had begun peeling off. The glass doors exploded, knocking one of the men 8 feet backwards, acting as shrapnel as it hit his arm and foot. “That’s when I realized,” he said, “this is the scaredest I’ve ever been in my life!” Miraculously none of the other family members sustained injuries, although the home was destroyed.
In Port Charlotte, as in Fort Myers the week before, we met fascinating people from all over the country. One fun, friendly couple called themselves “Doves.” They are members of a whole group of people, in touch via an internet group, who live aboard their motor homes, moving around the country as the mood hits them. When there is a disaster somewhere, they go where they’re needed, taking their homes with them. When they arrive at the Red Cross site, they’re ready to go to work. Mary and Ernie invited us to their home for a glass of wine, and then out to dinner. What a fascinating lifestyle! They’ve been living “on the road” for four years now, and tell us that there are many more people out there just like them.
As the week went on, I seemed to be talking with younger people, many of them with young children. Many of them were having big problems getting to the Red Cross location to apply for help. They didn’t live near. School had finally started, and their kids were on different shifts. Some of the schools were damaged and couldn’t be used, resulting in doubling up at other schools, with shifts starting very early in the morning and others going late into the evening. People were waiting their turn to see a case worker and afraid they would lose their place, but had to go pick up or drop off children at school. I hated it but I couldn’t tell anyone how long it would be before they got in. There were so many people. Some people had needs which were straightforward and readily addressed. They might be with a case worker, once they got in, for 20 minutes. Others were there for hours.
We were preparing to move out again. The Red Cross administration still had not decided when and where the workers would be moved, but everyone was told to be ready. Hurricane Ivan was coming toward us, and it looked like this could be worse than Charley. Worse than Frances. Everyone was edgy. People were getting really nervous. Toward the end of the week, people weren’t talking about what had happened to them during Charley anymore. Everyone was talking about Ivan, about getting out of the area. “I’ve got to get out of here,” one woman told me. “I can’t go through it again. But my tires have plugs in them from the nails I picked up from the debris. I don’t know if my car will make it out of the state.” Then there was the young father who said that, if it was just him, he could sleep in his car. “But I’ve got three young children. I have to find some place to take them. Our house is gone. My job is gone. I’m out of money.” You could feel the tension rise as the third “big one” moved closer. I asked some people why they hadn’t come for help before, right after Charley hit. They told me that they hadn’t realized they could get help. Or they figured others needed it more than they did. They had a little savings. They could take care of themselves. Now, several weeks later, the savings were gone. Their jobs were gone. For some of them, their homes were gone. Others were just severely damaged. They worried that their homes, many with blue tarps provided by the Army Corps of Engineers on the roofs, would not make it through another storm.
Finally, on Friday afternoon, we were told we would be closing down at noon on Saturday. Most of the workers would be sent to Orlando to weather the next storm. When it was over, they would be back. Some of them would probably be sent to other areas, depending on where Ivan decided to make land. Gail and I would head back across the Everglades again, to make sure all was well at her home. I would finally get a chance to hold the beautiful seven month old grandson I hadn’t seen yet. Then I would be going back home, to Costa Rica.
Just before we closed down, a young woman drove up to the front door and jumped out of her car. There were two babies in the back seat. “I don’t know what to do. I have nowhere to go,” she sobbed. Clearly on the verge of collapse, she had driven to the Red Cross, hoping someone could help her. She didn’t know what to ask for, but she knew she needed help. Gail had just walked up, finished with her job for the day. She stayed with the young woman while I went inside to get a mental health worker to come out front. When Gail put her arm around her, the woman clung to her. Apparently her in-laws had told her that they would not help her, that they took care of their own family and that she should do the same. Just when you think your faith in humanity has been permanently restored, something like this happens. After getting her car safely parked, two Red Cross workers carried her two babies inside. Walking alongside, she appeared frail and young. It was the last we saw of her. I hope she got the help she needed. I hope her life improves.
“Would you do it again?” I asked Gail as we drive back across the Everglades. “Absolutely,” she said. “Yeah, me too.” We were grateful that we had been able to help. We were warmed by the many displays of the durability and compassion of the human spirit. We had made new friends. Our lives had been enriched.
Ivan spared us. Others weren’t as lucky. This, the third big storm to strike Florida this year, pounded up the Gulf of Mexico, striking the Florida panhandle and Alabama with all his fury. There were few areas in Florida which hadn’t been affected by at least one of these three massive storms. Gail got back to her life. I returned to Costa Rica. And we watched, in horror along with everyone else, as Hurricane Jeanne threw her destructive force at Haiti, killing hundreds of people, and then at Florida again, this one making landfall on the east coast, in the same area where Frances had hit, then following Frances’s path west and then north into Georgia. Chances of two major hurricanes making landfall in the same spot in a given season are said to be more than one in a million. Never before had four major hurricanes pummeled one state in a single hurricane season, never mind within six weeks. Our lives had been enriched. Many others will never be the same again.
In response to Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, which the Red Cross calls the “largest natural disaster in its history,” over 10 million meals and snacks have now been served (as of October 4th). That’s twice as many meals as were provided after Hurricane Andrew. Seven weeks after Charley, the 1st hurricane, 100,000 meals are still being served each day. 1,733 shelters, serving 415,589 people, have been set up during that period. As of the 27th of September, 491 Emergency Response Vehicles had been in operation. 22,732 health services contacts and 42,858 mental health contacts had been made. This effort was accomplished by 25,578 workers, most of whom were volunteers.
The American Red Cross operates almost completely with volunteers. Not one penny is received from the government. This awesome organization, which helps thousands of people wherever disaster occurs, is funded totally by contributions, which can be made online at www.redcross.org.
“It’s hard, but thank God we’re all still alive.”
“We’re doing a little better today, but I don’t know how we’ll ever get this whole mess cleaned up.”
Hey, guys! What’s for dinner today?”
“I just hope Frances hits us instead of somewhere else. We’ve already lost everything anyway. I hate to see anyone else have to go through this.”
“They just condemned my house. I have nowhere to go. I lost my job when the hurricane blew the building away. I don’t know what to do.”
These were some of the comments we heard on our first day working with the Red Cross after Hurricane Charley.
Type rest of the post hereMy friend Gail and I were on Ft Myers Beach, Florida, a long skinny island no more than 2 – 4 blocks wide in most places. Charley had devastated the area 2 weeks before we arrived. Now, with electricity restored to most areas, everyone was trying to clear away the devastation caused by the powerful Friday the 13th hurricane. The residents of this area had thought they were safe. Then, just before making landfall, Charley had made that unexpected “jog to the east,” while strengthening to a category 4. 145 mile an hour winds and a 15 foot wall of water do unimaginable damage. Every house we passed appeared to have most of its contents piled at the edge of the street, and most houses were on stilts, so that the main floor was actually as high off the ground as a normal 2nd floor. Beach sand was everywhere. Downed trees. Waterlogged carpet, furniture, sheetrock. Refrigerators with watermarks half way up. And this in one of the less damaged areas hit by the storm. And everywhere we went, smiling people. Grateful that they had survived. Grateful to see us.
Gail and I were doing duty on an ERV (Emergency Response Vehicle), providing meals, water and snacks twice a day to the people of the area. As the driver carefully maneuvered down each dead-end street in our ambulance type van, one of us ladeled out meals into divided Styrofoam clamshell containers. The other talked to the people who watched for us coming down their street. Serving chicken and dumplings with mixed vegetables, canned peaches and a roll from a vehicle dodging downed trees and miscellaneous debris can be a challenge.
It was the first time for both of us to do this type of volunteer work. Everyone there was so grateful, and so brave, and often, so scared. We were grateful, too. Grateful for the opportunity to help a little. And we were overwhelmed – by the devastation and by the positive attitudes of the people.
We had arrived in the area the afternoon before and had been given a guest room in the home of someone we had never even met before – our online friend Nancy Goodenow. Nancy had been in Costa Rica when Charley had hit. She worried on the group about her beautiful cat, who was weathering the storm without her back in Cape Coral. When I e-mailed Nancy that we were going there to help, she immediately offered us a place to stay. Since we had expected to try to find someplace we could get away with sleeping in the back of Gail’s covered pickup truck, we blessed Nancy many times over. Nancy had worked with the Red Cross before, and was able to give us some pointers and head us in the right direction the next morning.
We were welcomed with open arms by the Red Cross people. There were already over 6,000 volunteers working in the area, and they needed more. There were many jobs to be done. The gigantic mobile kitchens were able to prepare 20,000 meals a day at each of 2 locations. People were needed to work on the ERV’s, delivering the meals. Others were assigned to other trucks, delivering cleanup supplies and water. Others were assigned to Family Services, interviewing people to determine their needs and provide financial assistance. They needed phone people, clerical people, coordinators. There were doctors, nurses, medical and mental health workers. Somehow this massive effort was being done almost completely with volunteers. Only about 5% of Red Cross workers are paid staffers. During a massive crisis like this, I assume the ratio of volunteers to staffers becomes even larger, as many local people become “spontaneous” volunteers. “Regular” volunteers, the ones who have attended the numerous Red Cross volunteer classes and are rushed to the scene when a disaster occurs, had come from as far away as Washington state and Canada. Many of them had driven the ERV’s or other needed vehicles all the way to Florida. We met people from all over the country. Many of them, like us, are retirees, who are able to be away from home when needed. Some are working people, who have an understanding with their employers that when a disaster calls them, they will be gone for 3 weeks, the standard time commitment.
Many of those who were hit by this disaster are elderly. This is, after all, South Florida. “Starting over” at 80 or 90 looks different than when you are 20 or 30. Many had no insurance. Most didn’t know where to start. And no one could find a roofer. Most were still waiting for an insurance adjuster. Some, who had been told the adjuster would call them to schedule a visit, wondered how that would be done without working phones.
During her first week there, before our arrival, Pam, the navigator on our ERV, had noticed one elderly lady who struggled down the stairs of her home to get a meal each time. Pam immediately befriended the lady and carried a meal, water and snacks upstairs to her on each of our twice daily runs. One of our jobs was to keep our eyes out for people who might be in critical need of more assistance than we could provide with a meal. When we came across the woman whose house had been condemned and whose job was gone, Pam immediately realized that she was on the verge of collapse. We quickly turned around and went back to headquarters to get a mental health worker out there to help the young woman. Everyone was working together to do the best they could to provide help for the immediate needs of the victims. The long-range needs are another thing. We all worried about people in their 80s and 90s who were going to have to start over. We worried about young people, jobs gone and running out of money, with young children to care for.
We learned a lot from our experiences after Charley. I learned that soaking one’s hat in ice water and then re-applying it to the head can provide wonderful relief from the Florida heat. We learned that it’s possible for an almost all volunteer group of 6,000+ people (from 48 states, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Canada and Costa Rica) to come together and immediately provide help to those in need. Is this what is meant by “organized chaos?” There were times when it seemed no one knew what was going on. Nevertheless, it all somehow got done, and got done well, and usually it got done with a smile. We learned that people somehow find incredible strength within themselves in times of crisis. And we learned some things about preparing for a hurricane, which turned out to be useful information the following week.
It seemed that just as we got up to speed with our jobs, we had to leave. Hurricane Frances was now threatening us and it looked like this one would be worse than Charley. It was enormous. And it was headed toward the other side of Florida – the east side – where Gail lives. As most of the regular Red Cross people were preparing to leave the area for safety if necessary as Frances headed toward us, Gail and I headed toward this new monster storm, to make her home ready for a potential pounding. Frances got on all our nerves, growing and getting nastier by the day, but slowing down to a crawl. It looked like we were definitely in the path of the storm this time. Lucky for us Frances decided to hit further north, around Stuart, Florida and then across the state toward Tampa and then toward the north. Hollywood, where Gail lives, felt very little effect from the storm, although we were without electricity for 22 hours and many were without for much longer. One massive tree was uprooted across the street. We kept watching the huge mango trees in Gail’s yard, expecting them to end up on her house. We were lucky.
Let me tell you about my friend Gail. Gail is the kind of person who is always there to help those in need. I’ve never known anyone else like her. When someone experiences a personal crisis, Gail doesn’t just say, “Call me if I can help,” or even “Is there anything I can do to help.” She seems to already know what to do, and just proceeds to do it. When her ex-husband, of many years before, had a personal crisis and was about to lose his home, she made sure he got medical care. Then, with her limited funds, she bought a mobile home for him to live in, rent free until he could get his feet on the ground, for a small rent thereafter. And, since he was physically unable to handle the move, she drove the four hours to his area in a U-Haul truck to get him moved in. When her neighborhood was up in arms over a homeless shelter moving into the area, Gail took them used clothes and bedding. So it wasn’t surprising, when I asked if she would go with me to do hurricane relief work, when she answered, “Of course I will.” Everyone should have a friend like Gail. Most people don’t. I’m lucky. I do. By the time Frances finally passed, we were bored. And ready to go back to work.
Workers were now needed further north on the east coast, where Frances had done the most damage. But people were still needed back on the west coast, which had thankfully been spared the worst of Frances’s fury, but was still trying to cope with the destruction of Charley. Gail and I loaded up the truck again and headed back west, across Alligator Alley, and went through Punta Gorda to Port Charlotte (the 2 towns that had been worst hit by Charley). As we drove through Punta Gorda, we couldn’t speak. I thought of describing it as a war zone, but doubted whether war zones looked this bad. It seemed that everything had been destroyed. I had read that 80% of the buildings in the area had sustained some damage. I couldn’t imagine where the 20% were.
We assumed we would have to drive north a long way to find a place to sleep. We stopped at the one hotel we saw which appeared to still be intact and open for business. They told us that there were no rooms available in the area. We stopped at the nearest Red Cross office and by some miracle they knew of a hotel that might still have a room. Someone made a call for us and found that there was one room left at the Veranda Inn in Englewood. They promised to hold it for us and gave us the Red Cross discounted rate. We were thrilled to find that it was only 3 or 4 miles from the place where we would be working, and that there was a great restaurant directly across the street, also still opened. After a great meal of fresh sautéed scallops, we hit the sack.
The next morning, we arrived early at the Red Cross service center, ready to work. But first we stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts along the way for our morning fix of donuts and coffee. Gail swore we would both gain 20 pounds from this experience if we kept eating according to my cravings, but I was determined to take advantage off all the things available that we don’t get in Costa Rica.
Gail was put to work the first day driving trucks around to different locations. Driving was the one job that she really didn’t want, but after all we had said we were willing to do anything that was needed, and Gail is a retired professional truck driver. She was stuck! After the first day, she was given various jobs in the office, including making phone calls to recruit additional workers from the community. I was given the job of “crowd control.” It turned out that my job was not nearly as unpleasant as its name sounded. I spent the rest of the week outside of the service center signing people up to meet with a case worker and making sure there was some semblance of fairness in who got in first. It gave me the opportunity to talk with a lot of really great people, and to hear their incredible stories. People lined up well before we opened in the morning. Some people ended up waiting most of the day. Everyone understood that the workers were doing the best they could to help a lot of people who desperately needed assistance. Patience indeed is helpful at times like this.
One elderly woman sat and talked to me for a long time. Her home was gone and she was hoping to get some help. She had her hair done up in those pink rollers that women wore back in the 50s. Spotting some people around with big camera equipment, she told me she hoped they weren’t from the TV station, because if her daughter in New Jersey saw her out in public in her curlers, she would disown her!
One 75 year old woman and her quadriplegic son talked with me for a while and gave me a copy of the newspaper article which had been written on their family’s survival. Sixteen family members had gathered in the home they thought would be the safest to weather Charley together. In the darkened house, one of the women got everyone into the internal hallway as the worst of the storm hit. The pool cage blew off. The glass doors began to buckle. Then they saw light and felt a breeze. The roof had begun peeling off. The glass doors exploded, knocking one of the men 8 feet backwards, acting as shrapnel as it hit his arm and foot. “That’s when I realized,” he said, “this is the scaredest I’ve ever been in my life!” Miraculously none of the other family members sustained injuries, although the home was destroyed.
In Port Charlotte, as in Fort Myers the week before, we met fascinating people from all over the country. One fun, friendly couple called themselves “Doves.” They are members of a whole group of people, in touch via an internet group, who live aboard their motor homes, moving around the country as the mood hits them. When there is a disaster somewhere, they go where they’re needed, taking their homes with them. When they arrive at the Red Cross site, they’re ready to go to work. Mary and Ernie invited us to their home for a glass of wine, and then out to dinner. What a fascinating lifestyle! They’ve been living “on the road” for four years now, and tell us that there are many more people out there just like them.
As the week went on, I seemed to be talking with younger people, many of them with young children. Many of them were having big problems getting to the Red Cross location to apply for help. They didn’t live near. School had finally started, and their kids were on different shifts. Some of the schools were damaged and couldn’t be used, resulting in doubling up at other schools, with shifts starting very early in the morning and others going late into the evening. People were waiting their turn to see a case worker and afraid they would lose their place, but had to go pick up or drop off children at school. I hated it but I couldn’t tell anyone how long it would be before they got in. There were so many people. Some people had needs which were straightforward and readily addressed. They might be with a case worker, once they got in, for 20 minutes. Others were there for hours.
We were preparing to move out again. The Red Cross administration still had not decided when and where the workers would be moved, but everyone was told to be ready. Hurricane Ivan was coming toward us, and it looked like this could be worse than Charley. Worse than Frances. Everyone was edgy. People were getting really nervous. Toward the end of the week, people weren’t talking about what had happened to them during Charley anymore. Everyone was talking about Ivan, about getting out of the area. “I’ve got to get out of here,” one woman told me. “I can’t go through it again. But my tires have plugs in them from the nails I picked up from the debris. I don’t know if my car will make it out of the state.” Then there was the young father who said that, if it was just him, he could sleep in his car. “But I’ve got three young children. I have to find some place to take them. Our house is gone. My job is gone. I’m out of money.” You could feel the tension rise as the third “big one” moved closer. I asked some people why they hadn’t come for help before, right after Charley hit. They told me that they hadn’t realized they could get help. Or they figured others needed it more than they did. They had a little savings. They could take care of themselves. Now, several weeks later, the savings were gone. Their jobs were gone. For some of them, their homes were gone. Others were just severely damaged. They worried that their homes, many with blue tarps provided by the Army Corps of Engineers on the roofs, would not make it through another storm.
Finally, on Friday afternoon, we were told we would be closing down at noon on Saturday. Most of the workers would be sent to Orlando to weather the next storm. When it was over, they would be back. Some of them would probably be sent to other areas, depending on where Ivan decided to make land. Gail and I would head back across the Everglades again, to make sure all was well at her home. I would finally get a chance to hold the beautiful seven month old grandson I hadn’t seen yet. Then I would be going back home, to Costa Rica.
Just before we closed down, a young woman drove up to the front door and jumped out of her car. There were two babies in the back seat. “I don’t know what to do. I have nowhere to go,” she sobbed. Clearly on the verge of collapse, she had driven to the Red Cross, hoping someone could help her. She didn’t know what to ask for, but she knew she needed help. Gail had just walked up, finished with her job for the day. She stayed with the young woman while I went inside to get a mental health worker to come out front. When Gail put her arm around her, the woman clung to her. Apparently her in-laws had told her that they would not help her, that they took care of their own family and that she should do the same. Just when you think your faith in humanity has been permanently restored, something like this happens. After getting her car safely parked, two Red Cross workers carried her two babies inside. Walking alongside, she appeared frail and young. It was the last we saw of her. I hope she got the help she needed. I hope her life improves.
“Would you do it again?” I asked Gail as we drive back across the Everglades. “Absolutely,” she said. “Yeah, me too.” We were grateful that we had been able to help. We were warmed by the many displays of the durability and compassion of the human spirit. We had made new friends. Our lives had been enriched.
Ivan spared us. Others weren’t as lucky. This, the third big storm to strike Florida this year, pounded up the Gulf of Mexico, striking the Florida panhandle and Alabama with all his fury. There were few areas in Florida which hadn’t been affected by at least one of these three massive storms. Gail got back to her life. I returned to Costa Rica. And we watched, in horror along with everyone else, as Hurricane Jeanne threw her destructive force at Haiti, killing hundreds of people, and then at Florida again, this one making landfall on the east coast, in the same area where Frances had hit, then following Frances’s path west and then north into Georgia. Chances of two major hurricanes making landfall in the same spot in a given season are said to be more than one in a million. Never before had four major hurricanes pummeled one state in a single hurricane season, never mind within six weeks. Our lives had been enriched. Many others will never be the same again.
In response to Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, which the Red Cross calls the “largest natural disaster in its history,” over 10 million meals and snacks have now been served (as of October 4th). That’s twice as many meals as were provided after Hurricane Andrew. Seven weeks after Charley, the 1st hurricane, 100,000 meals are still being served each day. 1,733 shelters, serving 415,589 people, have been set up during that period. As of the 27th of September, 491 Emergency Response Vehicles had been in operation. 22,732 health services contacts and 42,858 mental health contacts had been made. This effort was accomplished by 25,578 workers, most of whom were volunteers.
The American Red Cross operates almost completely with volunteers. Not one penny is received from the government. This awesome organization, which helps thousands of people wherever disaster occurs, is funded totally by contributions, which can be made online at www.redcross.org.
