Katrina Relief: What Is Not Happening
Robert Radujko-Moore, Ph.D., Los Angeles
See another volunteer's story in Newsweek from the Tylertown Red Cross disaster aid operations: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9729481/site/newsweek/, and an AP story on the Battle to Rebuild: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9469300/site/newsweek/
The Red Cross has definitely provided assistance to the survivors of Katrina. Yet for the tens of thousands of people who came to Tylertown, McComb, Hattiesburg, Beckman, and the other Red Cross service operations above New Orleans in a stretch of southeastern Mississippi, the poorest region in the United States, there hasn't been any relief. There isn't any now and politics are preventing a readily available service operation from stepping-up.
I participated in the same Red Cross operations that Dan Cole wrote about in the Newsweek article. He described much of the scenario quite well. Nonetheless, the Red Cross did its job. That is, the Red Cross provides emergency "first-aid" in the form of small amounts of money ($360 per person, up to a maximum of $1,565) and a few bulk goods. Other than temporary shelter, food and water, that's really it. There’s nothing lacking about it. That’s what the Red Cross does.
In terms of my Red Cross experience, many people of any color were not willing to go to Tylertown, Mississippi, but more so for blacks; and one woman, a reverend, educated me on why. We were at the core of white-to-black racism, the foundry of the South’s crucible for black people, the heartland of the Jim Crow laws. The black Katrina volunteers who came to Tylertown were brave and great people, walking into the deepest of Dixie. There were also noble local people, black and white, especially the church folks, who worked together outside the box, rippling the status quo. Racism was as palpable as the staggering, muggy heat in Tylertown.
The people victimized by this natural, human, and inhumane disasters are the most remarkable humans I have ever encountered. The pain, loss, despair, suffering, anguish, and agony they carry are hard to even imagine.
A woman miscarried during the flooding, yet had her baby still inside her, walked for miles from one hospital to another, and no one treated her. A third hospital did bring her in, removed the dead child from her body, and sent her on her way. She was told, "you can always have another baby."
A police officer and his assistants came up from New Orleans. Houses are marked with a red circle and a line through it, like a "no smoking" sign, to indicate that no one remains inside. An inverted triangle means there is a corpse for removal. The officer said there are not 10,000 dead, but there are probably hundreds. Rescue workers and officers tied or chained corpses to streetlight posts, signs, rails, tracks, and fences. One of the assistants said that they keep finding people in their homes. One fellow was holed up in the attic of a home marked as clear. He’d been there with minimal rations for three weeks. There are hundreds of folks still trapped in their homes. The relief and police services are undermanned. I asked how they could possibly handle so much death. The officer said one grows sort of numb to it, like how an MD might become. He said that if I dropped over in front of him, he’d check to see if I was alive and if I wasn’t, he’d just step over me and go on. Later, the assistant said that she cannot get to numb, that she’s been crying for hours in between trying to function, with each corpse is found.
A man clung to his wife as they tried to get to their car when the water poured in from Lake Pontchartrain, but their hands were pulled apart suddenly and she was gone. So was his house, his pictures, all of his records, books, clothes, and he doesn’t know where the rest of his family wound up, if they made it.
The most incredible, unbelievable and poignant part of this journey was the hope and faith of these amazing people. Almost to a person, over and over and over again, I heard about their faith in God and their preservation of hope. The unwavering love among those who found or attached themselves to each other was indescribable, and people were so grateful for help, even too little and too late. It was beyond astounding to me to hear such words after these accounts of infinite, ongoing suffering. I have never met people who carried such grace and love in the face of horror, inhumanity, annihilation, anger, despair, and sheer agony.
The day after Hurricane Rita made landfall, I went from Tylertown to Greenville, Mississippi by way of a Red Cross courier. I made my way to Greenville, because a friend, a colleague of mine has taken matters into his own hands. With Rita over us, the ride with him was amazing. The rain and wind became so furious that we couldn’t see more that 20-feet beyond the vehicle. My friend has an 8,000-pound Hummer H2, and we hydroplaned sideways while driving 5 to 10 miles per hour due to nearby tornadoes.
He’s renovating a large facility, designed to take-in forensic psych patients, dedicating half of the available 225,000 square feet for the survivors of Katrina, but its much more. The core goal is to integrate these folks into the community of Greenville (or wherever they so choose) so that they do not return to the condition of poverty. I design and manage specialized healthcare operations and programs, and my friend wanted to talk with me about the Greenville project. We spent two days talking about lessons learned from Tylertown, brainstormed it all into his plan for community, vocational training, medical, mental health, church and educational support for the survivors of Katrina who will come to Greenville for help. This will be real help, and it’s about time someone stepped up to do it.
He’s a staunch Republican and I’m a Democrat. We vehemently disagree on many things, but we are the closest of friends and on what counts, we’re on the same page entirely.
Yesterday, my friend informed me that GSA/FEMA had "changed their mind because our facility was too far from the affected area." He said the "the local politicians were insisting that people be relocated to areas that were only a few miles from where the folks originally lived." Maybe there’s more to this reluctance on a political level, because the people in the affected region are destitute and nothing’s been developed otherwise. I wonder what tens of thousands of American Hurricane Katrina survivors would say about the offer? What would Americans’ think?
If we are a moral nation, if we have values, if we are the great country that we publicize ourselves to be, then doing nothing should not be an option. I know from meeting so many, incredible volunteers in the American Red Cross that the skills and heart are readily available. Americans in America need our help. May humanity meet the level of integrity, hope, and faith of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
human+rights+watch
http://www.hrw.org
"http://www.hrw.org/United+States+Refugees">http://www.hrw.org
"http://www.hrw.org">http://www.hrw.org
common cause
www.commoncause.org
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/28/AR2005112801681.html?sub=AR
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9729481/site/newsweek/
http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/article_main_page/0,1703,A%253D160930%2526M%253D150019,00.html
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/arpetitions/message/24
http://www.theunion.com/article/20050923/COMMUNITY/109230131
http://kittygenovesekatrina.blogspot.com/2005/11/what-me-worry-kitty-genovese-and.html
http://www.nbcc.org/resources/journalpages/lorraine-in-pennsylvania#G7sGRdZdf_3QDHE-RwDDHg
http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/news_item.2005-10-24.4731493941
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021000267.html
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/01/AR2006030101731.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/politics/10katrina.html?hp&ex=1139634000&en=914abcf6c2b5fc5a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/politics/10katrina.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/28/AR2005112801681.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021000267.html
Louisiana
New Orleans
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9729481/site/newsweek
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101409.html
New
Katrina
Hurricane
See another volunteer's story in Newsweek from the Tylertown Red Cross disaster aid operations: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9729481/site/newsweek/, and an AP story on the Battle to Rebuild: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9469300/site/newsweek/
The Red Cross has definitely provided assistance to the survivors of Katrina. Yet for the tens of thousands of people who came to Tylertown, McComb, Hattiesburg, Beckman, and the other Red Cross service operations above New Orleans in a stretch of southeastern Mississippi, the poorest region in the United States, there hasn't been any relief. There isn't any now and politics are preventing a readily available service operation from stepping-up.
I participated in the same Red Cross operations that Dan Cole wrote about in the Newsweek article. He described much of the scenario quite well. Nonetheless, the Red Cross did its job. That is, the Red Cross provides emergency "first-aid" in the form of small amounts of money ($360 per person, up to a maximum of $1,565) and a few bulk goods. Other than temporary shelter, food and water, that's really it. There’s nothing lacking about it. That’s what the Red Cross does.
In terms of my Red Cross experience, many people of any color were not willing to go to Tylertown, Mississippi, but more so for blacks; and one woman, a reverend, educated me on why. We were at the core of white-to-black racism, the foundry of the South’s crucible for black people, the heartland of the Jim Crow laws. The black Katrina volunteers who came to Tylertown were brave and great people, walking into the deepest of Dixie. There were also noble local people, black and white, especially the church folks, who worked together outside the box, rippling the status quo. Racism was as palpable as the staggering, muggy heat in Tylertown.
The people victimized by this natural, human, and inhumane disasters are the most remarkable humans I have ever encountered. The pain, loss, despair, suffering, anguish, and agony they carry are hard to even imagine.
A woman miscarried during the flooding, yet had her baby still inside her, walked for miles from one hospital to another, and no one treated her. A third hospital did bring her in, removed the dead child from her body, and sent her on her way. She was told, "you can always have another baby."
A police officer and his assistants came up from New Orleans. Houses are marked with a red circle and a line through it, like a "no smoking" sign, to indicate that no one remains inside. An inverted triangle means there is a corpse for removal. The officer said there are not 10,000 dead, but there are probably hundreds. Rescue workers and officers tied or chained corpses to streetlight posts, signs, rails, tracks, and fences. One of the assistants said that they keep finding people in their homes. One fellow was holed up in the attic of a home marked as clear. He’d been there with minimal rations for three weeks. There are hundreds of folks still trapped in their homes. The relief and police services are undermanned. I asked how they could possibly handle so much death. The officer said one grows sort of numb to it, like how an MD might become. He said that if I dropped over in front of him, he’d check to see if I was alive and if I wasn’t, he’d just step over me and go on. Later, the assistant said that she cannot get to numb, that she’s been crying for hours in between trying to function, with each corpse is found.
A man clung to his wife as they tried to get to their car when the water poured in from Lake Pontchartrain, but their hands were pulled apart suddenly and she was gone. So was his house, his pictures, all of his records, books, clothes, and he doesn’t know where the rest of his family wound up, if they made it.
The most incredible, unbelievable and poignant part of this journey was the hope and faith of these amazing people. Almost to a person, over and over and over again, I heard about their faith in God and their preservation of hope. The unwavering love among those who found or attached themselves to each other was indescribable, and people were so grateful for help, even too little and too late. It was beyond astounding to me to hear such words after these accounts of infinite, ongoing suffering. I have never met people who carried such grace and love in the face of horror, inhumanity, annihilation, anger, despair, and sheer agony.
The day after Hurricane Rita made landfall, I went from Tylertown to Greenville, Mississippi by way of a Red Cross courier. I made my way to Greenville, because a friend, a colleague of mine has taken matters into his own hands. With Rita over us, the ride with him was amazing. The rain and wind became so furious that we couldn’t see more that 20-feet beyond the vehicle. My friend has an 8,000-pound Hummer H2, and we hydroplaned sideways while driving 5 to 10 miles per hour due to nearby tornadoes.
He’s renovating a large facility, designed to take-in forensic psych patients, dedicating half of the available 225,000 square feet for the survivors of Katrina, but its much more. The core goal is to integrate these folks into the community of Greenville (or wherever they so choose) so that they do not return to the condition of poverty. I design and manage specialized healthcare operations and programs, and my friend wanted to talk with me about the Greenville project. We spent two days talking about lessons learned from Tylertown, brainstormed it all into his plan for community, vocational training, medical, mental health, church and educational support for the survivors of Katrina who will come to Greenville for help. This will be real help, and it’s about time someone stepped up to do it.
He’s a staunch Republican and I’m a Democrat. We vehemently disagree on many things, but we are the closest of friends and on what counts, we’re on the same page entirely.
Yesterday, my friend informed me that GSA/FEMA had "changed their mind because our facility was too far from the affected area." He said the "the local politicians were insisting that people be relocated to areas that were only a few miles from where the folks originally lived." Maybe there’s more to this reluctance on a political level, because the people in the affected region are destitute and nothing’s been developed otherwise. I wonder what tens of thousands of American Hurricane Katrina survivors would say about the offer? What would Americans’ think?
If we are a moral nation, if we have values, if we are the great country that we publicize ourselves to be, then doing nothing should not be an option. I know from meeting so many, incredible volunteers in the American Red Cross that the skills and heart are readily available. Americans in America need our help. May humanity meet the level of integrity, hope, and faith of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
human+rights+watch
http://www.hrw.org
"http://www.hrw.org/United+States+Refugees">http://www.hrw.org
"http://www.hrw.org">http://www.hrw.org
common cause
www.commoncause.org
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/28/AR2005112801681.html?sub=AR
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9729481/site/newsweek/
http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/article_main_page/0,1703,A%253D160930%2526M%253D150019,00.html
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/arpetitions/message/24
http://www.theunion.com/article/20050923/COMMUNITY/109230131
http://kittygenovesekatrina.blogspot.com/2005/11/what-me-worry-kitty-genovese-and.html
http://www.nbcc.org/resources/journalpages/lorraine-in-pennsylvania#G7sGRdZdf_3QDHE-RwDDHg
http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/news_item.2005-10-24.4731493941
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021000267.html
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/01/AR2006030101731.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/politics/10katrina.html?hp&ex=1139634000&en=914abcf6c2b5fc5a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/politics/10katrina.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/28/AR2005112801681.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021000267.html
Louisiana
New Orleans
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9729481/site/newsweek
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101409.html
New
Katrina
Hurricane
posted by Katrina RRMs | 1:02 PM
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