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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Re: Report from the side -- I'm not at the front.

--- Fred Juergens <fredjuergens@charter.net> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm writing a sort of generic report on my
> activities as a Red Cross Disaster Relief volunteer.
> I do have email access, so if you have a question
> or just want to say hi, please write back.
>
> Almost at the last minute, Red Cross changed its
> mind about where I could serve best as a volunteer
> for the hurricane disasters. Last Wednesday about
> 430p they called and told me to get a flight to
> Washington DC. I was also told to pack for going
> south later, if needs changed. I left on Thursday
> morning from Evansville to the Madison RC office to
> pick up some necessary paper work, and flew out at
> 2pm that afternoon. My service is to work in the RC
> National Disaster Relief Call Center in suburban
> DC,across the Potomac river in Falls Church, VA.
>
> My job is to take calls from people all over the
> south who are either requesting direct assistance
> from the Red Cross, or trying to find information
> about loved ones, or information about other sources
> of aid.... I provide direct help if I can, seek
> other sources if I'm able and refer the callers to
> them, in some cases, refer them either to a nurse or
> a mental health professional, if their request is
> beyond my skill to help. Frequently I just take
> info from them and forward it to the RC chapter on
> the ground in their area, so local volunteers can
> contact them and attend to their needs directly.
>
> This call center runs 24/7, and I work from
> 3pm-1130pm - 6 days on, one off. There are
> volunteers here from all over the country doing
> similar work, but the volume of calls is such that
> RC has to hire skilled temporary workers to keep the
> cue of callers waiting on hold to a reasonable
> level. That cue has reached over 100 sometimes
> during the time I've been working. Sunday the center
> fielded over 9500 calls, and since the hurricanes
> struck, about 740,000. There are about 250 people
> taking calls during a 24 hour period, and the shift
> size varies of course; most during the day, some
> fewer during my evening shift, and fewer still
> during the graveyard shift. This call center is a
> massive operation. All the volunteers are housed in
> motels in the area, RC drivers drive vans back and
> forth between the headquarters and the various
> motels shuttling volunteers, and they feed us a hot
> meal during our shift. In addition to call agents
> like myself, there are nurses and mental health p!
> eople available in the office to assist those with
> specialized needs, various trainers and
> administrators to keep the ball rolling. Volunteers
> are arriving and leaving everyday -- as their
> three-week shifts expire.
>
> In a way I'm very fortunate to be doing this work,
> since my living conditions, both when I'm working
> and during time off, are much better than they would
> be if I were actually in one of the disaster areas.
> On the other hand,I think I might have preferred
> more direct contact with people and being able to
> directly serve them. Nonetheless, I am pleased to
> serve the RC in they way they think best. Since it
> appears that Wilma's effect on south Florida is
> somewhat less than total disaster, I now expect to
> stay here for the duration of my RC service. That
> could change, though...time will tell.
>
> In my current job, I certainly deal with a wide
> variety of issues. Calls from Florida just started
> coming in last night about 5 pm. Because so much of
> the communications infra structure down there was
> destroyed, all calls for help that were generated
> there were re-routed to us. People in Miami
> couldn't make local calls to police, firefighters,
> FEMA, etc, apparently. And all we could do was to
> refer to our list of open RC shelters and tell them
> to go there for whatever assistance might be
> available.
>
> On a more general level and primarily from the
> Katrina/Rita area, we receive calls from people
> whose RC debit cards aren't working; from people
> whose funds are running out, from people who don't
> really need help,but are trying to soak RC for
> whatever funds they can get, the variety is
> infinite. After a day of training, I was put on my
> own, and I field 20-50 calls per shift. One call
> took almost 45 minutes, as I was dealing with a
> distraught evacuee, a woman with two small children
> who couldn't find a place to stay, because the
> short-term aid from RC was running out, who had no
> friends or family to call, either in the area or
> near her Louisana home. I got a mental health
> counselor on the line to help calm her down while I
> did a frantic search for phone numbers of other
> agencies in Texas who might be able to help her.
> This all occurred about 9pm on Sunday night.
>
> We get a few other-category calls too -- last night,
> just as my shift was ending, a man called from near
> Chicago. He had just been released after a month in
> jail, he went to an aunt's house for a place to
> stay, and found that the house had burned down, and
> no one in the area knew where she was to be found.
> No transportation, very little money in his pocket.
> He was calling from a pay-phone in a gas station for
> advice on a place to stay overnight, because it was
> cold and rainy. I located the local number for the
> RC and for Salvation Army, but also told him to ask
> at a police or fire-station for location of a
> possible shelter for homeless people. Most of those
> places close earlier than the time he was calling,
> but I didn't know what else to do.
>
> It's stressful work for me, because at this
> distance, there's only so much one can do. Some of
> the stories are heart-breaking; it's sometimes hard
> to keep focused on what RC can actually do at this
> point for them, to get callers focused too, and then
> to work out a plan with them of what to do next.
> After the shift is over, I usually have to unwind a
> bit mentally before I can go to sleep. Other
> volunteers are in similar states, of course, and we
> sometimes just talk together in the motel lobby for
> a while before we're ready to go off to our separate
> rooms and rest. We volunteers also have nurses and
> mental health people available to us to meet any
> needs in those areas that we might have.
>
> Red Cross's main mission is emergency relief in the
> immediate aftermath of a disaster- providing
> emergency shelter, food, clothing, medical
> attention. Now we're almost 8 weeks afterward.
> People are still turning to us for help, because
> they don't know where else to go. RC is not geared
> towards long-term assistance; that (also) is FEMA's
> job. Of course, they're swamped too. RC has
> dispensed almost $1.4 billion in aid, and is, I'm
> told, in debt right now. RC needs to be a good
> steward of it's innumerable donors' contributions.
> Some people in need expect more than we can do. I'm
> sure that the Salvation Army, Goodwill, church
> charities and others are in a similar position.
>
> It's clearer by the day to me that no agency was
> prepared, perhaps could not have been fully
> prepared, for a disaster of Katrina/Rita magnitude.
> The sheer size of the need is way beyond any
> previous rrelief effort in the US Mistakes were
> made, of course, and some of them were probably due
> to inept administration, misuse of available
> resources, and lack of government funding. At this
> point, all we volunteers can do is to work within
> the structures in place, and do our best. It will
> be left to others to examine what could have been
> done better prior to the storms and to prepare
> better for future disasters.
>
> Just writing this is helpful for me -- it focuses me
> on my job here while letting me vent a bit too.
> I'll send another report when it seems appropriate,
> or if things change drastically for me.
>
> Be well,
> Fred
> "Be The Change You Wish To See In The World"--Gandhi
>

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for the update, and keep up the great work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you so much for sharing this report. Even though you aren't on the "front" you are there to hear their voices. You may feel like you aren't doing much, but just listening to their concerns helps them feel some hope I'm sure. I hope you can find peace despite being in such a stressful position.

    ReplyDelete