My Volunteer Experience

        Four days post-Katrina, and I walked into our city’s newest medical facility. It was opening night for this miracle of transformation. In a long-abandoned Kmart building in one of the worse sections of Baton Rouge, volunteers had miraculously, overnight, constructed a giant, air-conditioned triage center, full of nurses, social workers, other mental health providers and doctors. I was reporting for the midnight shift. 

Like dozens of my MFT colleagues, I felt the need to do something, anything, to help in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. This was the first of my three stints as a volunteer. The other two were in a crowded Red Cross shelter in downtown Baton Rouge, housing at that time about 5000 evacuees.

        Even four days post storm, reliable information was impossible to find. We waited all night for patients who were supposed to be coming in buses. Someone said they were on the way and would be here in an hour. As it turned out, only one bus showed up that night.

They were evacuees from the now notorious New Orleans convention center and we were apparently their first stop after being evacuated. Most were elderly or sick, so we placed them into wheelchairs and steered them over to the intake area.

They were alert, oriented and even conversant. But in their glazed eyes, you could see it: the stunned state of shock.

Most carried small suitcases or large plastic bags. Inside was every possession they now owned.

I stayed with one brave woman, who was in her late 70s and had been living alone, self-sufficient, before the storm. She was diabetic, among other illnesses and she was concerned about getting insulin. She had all her medications written down, dosages, everything, all organized in a Ziploc bag tucked deep in her larger bag.

        "I've got everything in here, just a minute," she calmly told the admitting nurse. The nurse smiled. Take your time, she said. The elderly woman pulled out a list of her medications, all neatly written, and for the first time, I felt like I would burst into tears.

Another woman arrived with her own mother and her son. The woman, I learned later, was dying from cancer and had been living with her elderly mother. She fretted about her son. Was he okay? Where was he? One of the school social workers had him in children's area, surrounded by toys and diversions.

He’s doing fine, we all said. Her mother had told us that her daughter had only a few months to live. The daughter began, spontaneously, talking about what she had seen. Beatings. Rapes. Lives threatened. Screaming. Crying. She shook her head and looked down.

        I checked on the elderly woman I had met at the door. I said I had heard it was horrible at the convention center. “Horrible, horrible,” she said, shaking her head. Children attacked. Women raped.

“They wouldn't treat animals like that,” she said.

        I later read that Louisiana’s official Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan had given exactly one sentence to plans on what to do with the tens of thousands who would be stranded in New Orleans during a catastrophe. That was it: one sentence. They were forgotten before they were forgotten, I thought.

        When I arrived at the Baton Rouge River Center the next week there were people everywhere, in every corner of the giant building. After checking in, I located the mental health area, on the second floor. The room overlooked the area where the evacuees were, and I was amazed at how many people were crammed into the cavernous room. They all had cots. Some were watching the one television in the building, others were milling around. Many were just sitting or lying on the cot. Everyone had a suitcase or large plastic bag, filled with everything they now owned in the world.

        In 15 minutes I was involved in finding a place for a mentally challenged man who apparently had arrived alone. He was distraught and needed a less chaotic and more structured setting.

         I helped arrange for him to get a ride to the medical clearance center I had worked in earlier. The state employed mental health workers there could find a safe place for him. This effort took hours and constituted my first day at the shelter.

        When I arrived the next day for my last shift, most of the Red Cross workers I had met the previous day were gone, replaced by a new crew. I felt like I was starting over. No one had any assignments, no specific duties for me, so I decided to wander the floor, just simply asking the evacuees if there was anything I could help them with.

I found that simply conveying information to the shocked and stunned evacuees, giving them answers to questions like: where were the phones, where could they something to eat or drink, what should they do about their medicine, where were the computers set up so they could try to find lost loved ones -- all of this was the best help I could give to them. I left hoping it did.

© Copyright 2005 Randall Griffith. Last update: 12/27/2005; 9:13:34 PM.