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
>