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Hi all,
Lyn and I recently returned from a three
week trip through 15 states, to the South to do volunteer work after
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the following is our report.
The genesis of this trip was our frustration
with anemic rescue efforts in New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama.
First Lyn went to the Red Cross to sign up as a volunteer and took
their all-day training, and I followed shortly. We waited patiently
for a couple of weeks, and finally went to find out what was happening.
They told us that there was a "hold on all deployments",
and when I asked if it was because of the changes then taking place
with FEMA (Brownie was being downgraded at the time), they had no
explanation except that "New York ordered a hold on all deployments."
We heard from our friends at Sacramento
for Democracy that a group of people from Veterans
for Peace had set up a camp in Covington, LA and were providing
humanitarian relief, food, etc. there. We spoke with some folks
both in Sacramento and in Covington, and finally left on September
15. Here is our farewell letter:
Well, the Red Cross
never called us so we are going on our own. (The Red Cross
says they have been told to hold all deployments by the
NY Office but won't tell anyone why. We think it has to
do with FEMA. Or maybe W.)
So we have made arrangements
with Veterans For
Peace, a group associated with Cindy Sheehan and Sacramento
for Democracy, to join their operation in Covington, LA.
(Go to http://www.sacramentofordemocracy.org
--- if we can find an internet connection we will blog.)
Don't know what we will be doing or anything else, but we
can't stand sitting around whining any more and we can't
afford to give much in the way of money. We should be back
in a couple of weeks… ONE of us has a job.
Sacramento for Democracy
is setting up an account for us and we are putting in all
our available money. If you'd like to support our efforts,
contact the site above and e-mail from there.
We are taking a cell
phone and a computer but don't know how either will work.
Our cell phone no. is 916-248-6148. We are also taking a
digital camera, a movie camera and a tape recorder too.
Won't we be surprised if there is no electricity anywhere
in the state??!!
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We set off in my car, traveling to Reno,
up through Nevada and then through Utah and Wyoming. In Echo, we
had this experience getting gas:
Echo Utah
We had started the
day heading for Wyoming, and somewhere in Utah noticed that we were
low on gas. The next road sign said, “Echo, food and gas”.
So we exited. Echo lived up to its name. This blip on the side of
the road had a couple of houses, 1 building (closed) complete with
gas pump and next door a café (it also looked closed). The
sign on the “service station” said “go next door
to buy gas”. So we did.
When we entered the “café”
we stepped back in time. There was a counter with rotating stools
and a couple of booths to the side. The place looked lived in but
not used. And there seemed to be a film of dust on everything. Sitting
at the counter was a gentleman who, one could only guess, appeared
to be in his seventies. Margie inquired about purchasing gas and
bought some chips while I headed for the restroom. We would discuss
the chips later.
The old gentleman walked us next door to
fill up and Margie made an observation that this gentleman might
have a monopoly on gas in the area (the road sign had said next
gas 76 miles). This did not sit well with the old gentlemen. He
huffed and puffed and said that he was not well and had really planned
to stay home today (see how lucky we were!). He sold us the gas
anyway ($3.20/gal.). I whispered to Margie to check on the expiration
date of the chips. We didn’t stay for lunch.
In Wyoming, we had our first (and really
only) major glitch. My car stopped functioning on a major artery
running through south Wyoming. We were pretty optimistic, as we
had a AAA card and a cell phone, though I soon realized that there
are very few "bars" in Wyoming (at least not the cell
phone type!) We put up the hood of the car and waited, till someone
stopped and called AAA for us. In about an hour we got both AAA
and a State Trooper dropping by, and we were hauled to Little America,
where they have a plethora of services set up just for poor souls
such as ourselves. We had to stay overnight there, till they found
out they couldn't fix the car and we were dragged to Rock Springs.
They couldn't fix it there, either, so we arranged to have my poor
car hauled to a the nearest dealership, which was in Ogden, Utah,
and rented a car for the rest of the trip.
The
trip begins (we bid adieu to our puppies...) |
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Lyn's: Oscar
and Brandy |
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Margie's: Morgan and Cookie |
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The
Trip (almost ) ends.... |
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| Margie's dead car; Lyn waiting
in Little America (lots of waiting there!); Margie watching
Nick take the car away; Nick. |
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Sisters
(Pueblo, CO) |
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| On the way, we stayed overnight
with two of Lyn's sisters, Anita and Vicki, Vicki's husband
Jim, and Vicki and Jim's dog, Oscar. (You can tell we missed
our respective puppies: we petted and photographed dogs everywhere.)
Pictured at the Reunion in Pueblo: Vicki and Jim's Oscar; Lyn
and Jim; Lyn; Lyn and Vicki; Anita, Vicki and Lyn; Lyn and Margie |
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Oklahoma
City, Waiting for Rita... |
We heard that there was
another hurricane forming in the Gulf, so we called our contact,
Monica, at the campsite in Covington. She told us they were
being told to evacuate and would be leaving shortly. She thought
they would be going to Mississippi or Alabama, but wasn't
sure at that point. She suggested we not go further south
since people from Texas and the other Gulf states were going
to motels and hotels further north and it might be impossible
to find anywhere to stay. We were also, of course, in no rush
to actually confront a live hurricane!
So we drove east, stopping in Oklahoma
City. We had a very comfortable, inexpensive motel, with wireless
connections plus cellphone access. We visited the Murragh
Building memorial and museum twice, once at night and once
in the daylight. We were both very affected by the experience.
The museum is a mockup of the day of the attack, and it was
somewhat of a shock to realize that this event was in fact
a terrorist attack, albeit from within our borders. We also
were stunned to realize how much more effectively FEMA operated
during this disaster, how beautifully the various state and
governmental agencies worked together, and how reassuring
it was to watch the video of the both Bill and Hillary Clinton
speaking to the nation the very day of the explosion. Not
to mention the dispatch with which the actual perpetrators
were found and tried!
We decided to volunteer at the local
Red Cross office. At their office, we filled out paperwork
and spoke with the volunteer coordinator, and signed up to
work the next day. After we got back to the motel, we were
surprised to get a phone call from the folks in the office.
They said that after we left, they realized that we "belonged"
to the California Red Cross group, and that the Red Cross
has a rule against "self-deployment", and since
we had in fact "self-deployed", they could not appear
to "abet" our actions by allowing us to volunteer
for them. We had been fired!
This was where I got a wireless card
for my laptop and we were both delighted that it worked!
The photos below are all from the Memorial. |
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Somewhere
in Tennessee
Finally, Rita lost her power and we called
Monica once more. She told us that VFP (Veterans for Peace)
had joined up with a group called SOS, for Save OurSelves, in
Mobile, Alabama, and that we could join them there.
We were headed down South through Hurricane Rita and stopped
to get something to drink. The rain had stopped, so we had
time to stretch our legs. While Margie went in to get something
to drink, I struck up a conversation with a gentleman, who
lived in this neck of the woods, about his four toy poodles
waiting impatiently in his car. Margie came out and I went
in, but the gentleman kept talking. It seems that he did not
like George Bush or his policies. This man did not finish
high school but managed to work at a job that paid well enough
to put his mother, sisters, and children through school. He
was well aware that chances were good that his children would
not be able to do the same!
Margie and I decided that we
were liberal magnets!
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Mobile! |
The Mobile operation
includes two houses and one warehouse, all donated, and supplies
donated as well. The money donated to them went mostly to
cleaning supplies, generators, and chain saws, or so it appears.
The operation is basically four groups:
SOS,
a group formed specifically to help out with the Katrina and
Rita efforts, a grassroots-only group centered in Mobile;
VFP (Veterans for Peace)(http://www.vfproadtrips.org/
); AIDSsails, a group formed of medical personnel who sail
all over the world principally to help with AIDS efforts,
and Plenty (http://www.plenty.org/),
a group out of The Farm, a commune formed in the 60's. There
were people from all these groups, and all ages. We slept
on air mattresses on the floor and had communal meals, and
worked together in several ways.
1. We handed out supplies to people
in the community from the warehouse. Volunteers handed out
food items, personal care, baby items and cleaning supplies,
and people could look through donated clothing and take what
they wanted. We also worked sorting out stuff and organizing
it, no small task! This was by far the hardest work, I think,
because there was no power or air conditioning and essentially
no air circulation in the warehouse. I could only work a couple
of hours straight without really getting woozy.
2. We went out into the areas badly
hit and gave cleaning supplies, personal/baby care stuff,
generators and chain saws to a multitude of church and community
distribution centers in the Houma Indian community, Algiers
(New Orleans), Biloxi, Long Beach, and other hard-hit communities.
I went to Biloxi one day and Lynn went to Long Beach. Those
communities were essentially the shells of homes and huge
piles of rubble, and we operated out of the poorest areas.
3. AIDSsails had a team of four medical
professionals with a mobile medical truck with supplies who
set up a clinic in Algiers and went there daily. They saw
about 100 patients a day and returned late every night to
the house.
4. Groups of volunteers went out into
the community and performed acts like cutting apart felled
trees, repairing roofs and in other ways cleaning up the hurricane
mess.
Many of the volunteers, if not most
(including us) were people who had tried to volunteer for
the Red Cross but were never called, even though we had gone
through all their training. This group even included nurses
and paramedics. None of us knows why this happened but we
were all dispirited. We will be doing more research!
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Southern Bugs
Below is a reproduction
of what everyone calls "lovebugs" for obvious
reasons, and a photo showing what they do to your car.
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The houses and
our co-volunteers
The use of two houses were donated
by a gentleman in the neighborhood who had bought them for
his children, who weren't interested in using them at present.
They were terrific: several large bathrooms, big kitchens,
and most importantly, functional air conditioning. WE were
told that the neighborhood had problems, but we felt perfectly
safe. Apparently when SOS/Veterans for Peace first got the
houses volunteers went out in the area to help put up tarps,
clear rubbish, cut down and remove downed trees, etc. We
felt right at home! The residents were wonderful, lots of
kids, but also a lot of older folks such as ourselves.
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The senior citizens house (ours!) The
other one is directly to the right of this one. |
:Lots of cars parked here! |
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We had communal breakfasts and lunches...
this is breakfast. |
Vivian is one of the leaders in SOS.
She is in both the pictures above. Her "day job"
is rap impresario and she had some great stories! |
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Veterans for Peace handed over control
of the whole operation here to SOS, and there was a meeting
to formally announce the changeover. |
Local dogs. Lyn wanted to take them
home. |
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This truck is the medical clinic which
drove to Algiers every day. They see 100 or so patients a
day, and had some horror stories. They reported that the number
of deaths due to the storm has been woefully underreported,
under FEMA pressure. It seems if a person had a heart attack
or other medical condition it was not included in the death
count. They also expect massive numbers of lung problems in
a few years due to all the asbestos in the water, as well
as other down the line deaths from the flooding and related
trauma. |
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| The bus at the right is
the Veterans for Peace bus, which came from Crawford and Cindy
Sheehan's vigil, and also went to the Peace March in Washington,
DC. The sign on the back of the bus says IMPEACH BUSH. We had
no trouble over it. |
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Working in the
Warehouse
We all worked in the
warehouse most of the time, and you can see how chaotic
conditions were when we first got here. As donations came
in, it took a lot of work to get everything organized and
sorted. I also decided that I won't donate old clothes to
relief efforts in the future; I think going through castoffs
is degrading. (OK for resale though...) Every day someone
brought in lunch for everyone, and one day Lyn and I (through
your contributions) bought the lunch. We also bought a carful
of cleaning supplies that you paid for. Bleach, mops, rags
and brushes were in great demand. Mold is a major problem
in the South normally, but it gets really awful in flood
conditions. (OUr house had a lot of mold as well.)
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SOS leader Joe, with Lyn, sorting toiletries. |
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Margie, showing signs of exhaustion
form sorting shoes. Temperatures in the warehouse were around
100, no air conditioning or ventilation or electricity. |
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Lyn, handing out supplies to local
people. |
Mark, a local volunteer. |
Mark
Mark was another volunteer we met in Mobile. He was a local
who had lived much of his life, except for a brief stint in
Michigan, in Alabama. Mark told a story that was very sad
and had no happy ending:
It seems that Mark had an older brother who had been murdered
in the 70’s by a white man. His brother had been having
trouble at school and his mother asked him to just back away
and do nothing to get in trouble. Desegregation was a slow
process and just really getting started. Emotions on all sides
were running high. One day a white man, who was in his 40’s,
Mark believes, approached his brother from behind, shot him
in the head, and killed him. The man was never prosecuted.
After Emmett Till’s murder came
back to the forefront and the case was reopened, Mark approached
a friend of the family who happened to be a judge. He asked
whether his brother’s case could be reopened. It seems,
according to the judge, that many of the cases have been lost.
The files were either destroyed or never moved to electronic
storage. He advised Mark not to pursue the case. Mark’s
mother is still heartbroken and Mark’s wound is still
fresh enough to tell a stranger.
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Biloxi
and Long Beach (Mississippi) Day Trips |
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Handing out supplies in a Biloxi neighborhood.
Most of the people had gone north during the actual storm
and were now digging out. The one Margie met were very determined
and still had their sense of humor. The gentleman on the right
said 50 people lived in the upper story of a local (small!)
house for a full week. He also said most people would not
be able to stay because insurance companies are not paying
out what they should. |
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Betty and Elaine, plus Betty's grandson.
Note the red writing on the house exterior. FEMA marks all
the house with a code that f8ives information about the house:
if it's a total loss or something less tragic. FEMA promised
Betty a trailer but it never came. No one had power. She had
a generator, but they run using gasoline, which is next to
impossible to get. |
Mulci (here) and Elaine both came from
The Farm, one of the last remaining 60's communes in the south.
Elaine has lived there since the 60's, and Mulci, who is 20-something,
was born there. Note the steam shovel in the background It
picked up the remains of one entire house in about 5 shovel
fulls, and put the whole thing in the huge dumpster. Imagine
watching your entire lifetime scooped up and trashed like
that! |
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An EconoLodge. Note the letters on
the top. |
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The beach in Biloxi. I understand this
was a fantastic, beautiful tourist area with palm tress everywhere,
palatial homes, a fountain, casinos and hotels, boardwalk
and beach stands, etc. Everything is destroyed and most is
completely gone. This was a hotel |
This was a cement boat, about the
length of a football field, which was tossed hundreds of feet
as if it were a piece of trash. Haley Barbour, Miss. Governor,
gave daily speeches to let people know what was happening.
At first he sounded outraged, but later he folded in line
with the Bush administration. The Indian Casinos (of which
this boat was one), were legally required to be off the beach
and consequently they were all destroyed. This was a concession
to the religious right, but he said they would be rebuilt
on land but still had to be on the coast.
Side note: I heard Miss. Congressman
Bennie
Thompson on Al Franken, saying that local people were
only 1.8% of the workforce hired to clean up, and that a Florida
firm of which Haley Barbour is a partner had received a big
contract. (We saw all kinds of trucks representing various
contractors... a lot were Halliburton. Makes you proud!) |
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Notice the white sofa on the beach... |
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National Guard trucks |
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We took this photo because it seemed
shocking that the water ride was intact when so many more
permanent structures were destroyed. |
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Slidell,
Louisiana
On the way home, we took
US 10 west through the south of Louisiana and Texas. We couldn't
get off the freeway because in the hurricane-hit areas all
the off-ramps were closed. However, we had to take a detour
through Slidell, which in some ways was even more shocking
than the devastation we had already seen. Only the outside
shells of the large, beautiful homes were intact.. everything
else was in piles in front of the houses. There were signs
advertising GUT-OUT services... they come in and gut the entire
house, leaving only the frame (if that). |
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Montoya
New Mexico
We were on our way back to Utah to check on Margie’s
car after spending time in the South. It was nighttime and
in New Mexico there were no freeways where we were going so
it was very dark outside. Margie was driving in her careful
way as we entered Montoya New Mexico, population, less than
50. Just as Margie saw the 35 MPH sign, and hit the brakes,
the red lights of the police car came on. It seems that the
police car was sitting on the opposite side of the street,
directly across from the MPH sign. To our surprise we were
pulled over.
The young officer (couldn’t be 25) asked Margie for
her driver’s license and registration, which she promptly
handed over. He informed her that she had been going 55 in
a 35 mph zone. The fine for such excessive speed would be
over $100. Margie, in her diplomatic way, stated that she
was very sorry for not seeing the sign sooner, and that we
had just been down South helping with relief efforts, we were
tired, and she did not normally do such a thing.
The young officer did what
officer’s do in traffic stops, and then gave Margie
back her driver’s license and registration. He informed
her that he would not give her a ticket this time but to be
more careful next time she entered Montoya (I don’t
think we were coming back).
Because we felt we had established
a rapport with this young officer, we took a chance and asked
whether there was a gas station opened. The young officer
informed us that the town was shut down for the night and
that the only gas station was closed but that you could get
gas by using a credit card. We said we didn’t need gas;
we needed to go to the bathroom. Now you would think that
young officer would have to go to the bathroom somewhere,
wouldn’t you? He couldn’t be of assistance, so
we continued on our way.
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Margie's Cousin
Bill
Margie's cousin, Bill,
and his wife Leslie live in Ogden, Utah, which was handy
since we had to see about the car, which had been towed
to a dealer in Ogden. We had a lovely visit, and since I
have hardly any family, and neither does he, it was great
for both of us.
Bill is also of the
opinion that our mutual grandfather (my mother's and his
father's father) was half Mohawk Indian. Leslie is interested
in genealogy so hopefully we can combine our efforts and
find out the truth.
The car? Not fixed,
probably will never be fixed and it's still in Ogden. (The
only bad thing about the trip!)
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