Red Cross Gustav Part 2

At Baton Rouge headquarters, I was assigned to Sheltering, but Wayne, Casey and our new friend Dave were all assigned to Feeding. But we had one vehicle and an OK from Randy for an apartment, so we had to get me into Feeding so we could all stay together. That turned out to be a greater challenge than expected, as the bureaucratic staff wasn’t willing to move anyone whose name was already on a list. Though we had agreed we would re-rent the van under Wayne’s name, at that point it was rented under my name, and vehicles were hot commodities at BR headquarters. So we went to Linda, the Feeding recruiter, said we four wished to be together in Feeding, but that I had been assigned to Sheltering, and that I had a vehicle. That was enough for Linda to want me, so we went back to the bureaucrats and told them Linda now ordered the swap. :-)

Linda placed us all together into what was called “Kitchen 6.” At its peak, Baton Rouge had 16 feeding stations; like ours, most were at Baptist churches. In the South, the Red Cross and the Baptists work together so remarkably that we from the West Coast are awed. Wayne, Casey & Dave were all from CA, as were our Kitchen Manager and a number of others; four of us were from WA and a couple of others were from OR, so the West Coast dominated Kitchen 6 and we were all struck by the Baptist/Red Cross connection. Baptists from Oklahoma set up extraordinary traveling cooking stations and move from disaster to disaster with the Red Cross. We get the food, they cook it, and we mutually serve it. At Kitchen 6, this meant the local Baptists at our host church served food at the line for cars driving in for food, while we from the RC drove food out to serve from our ERVs.

I served out of an ERV for my first two days and then volunteered for . . . more than I knew. Jere, our Kitchen Manager, wanted someone who could study maps for special assignments in order to determine which route/ERV was needed for each one and to help the drivers find them. Having some familiarity with Baton Rouge, I agreed to do it. As it turned out, I was not only needed for that, but also in setting the ERV shifts, keeping track of people’s rotation days and days off, maintaining the ERV lists and other paperwork, and responding to constant telephone calls. Some of these calls were from a bureaucrat who sent our ERVs onto urgent missions that turned into mystery hunts. Little did I know what I had agreed to!

Only later did I discover that much of this work was the job of the “ERV Coordinator” and that was Bob, one of my favorite co-workers. But Jere was organized beyond belief and Bob didn’t put any of his plans to paper, let alone into the tediously formatted computer forms Jere wanted. So perhaps without consciously realizing it, Jere swept Bob aside and had me do that job. Once I understood this, I went with Bob for a special drop-off a half-hour away, swapped ideas with him, and finally learned what to do. Bob was generally more happy on an ERV, so from that point on, I accepted the task.

Later I wondered whether the job had been given to me for a very specific purpose that came about on my last full day. As the previous blog explained, Gustav knocked Baton Rouge completely out of power for a couple of weeks. (We felt the effects too, as air conditioners sit in the window sills in all of Randy’s apartments, making them oven-like when power is out.) However, about two weeks after Gustav hit, most of the city and surrounding region had power and most people were enough back on their feet that the Red Cross was needed only for a few. For Kitchen 6, our previous need for 8-10 ERVs had declined to what I saw to be 5 and which I predicted would be only 2 in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, Ike had hit Texas and Red Cross was scrambling for workers, equipment, funds and all it needed to support the great need next door. After Fay’s lingering destruction, the floods and tornadoes, Gustav, etc., the RC was tapped out for yet another ’08 disaster. But we had a number of people who were ready, willing and eligible to redeploy to Ike.

Jere, on the other hand, finally had all the equipment, supplies and team members he needed to run the full operation he had needed the previous week and wanted to see it happen right. More to the point, his own supervisors – this same bureaucrat and her partner – locals to Baton Rouge, who were forgetting Red Cross's mission - put up strong breaks on any suggestion of redeployment to Ike. “No, no, no!” they cried, “They might have power, but their FEMA food stamps haven’t come in yet, so they still need us.” Jere accepted this explanation, but I raised my eyebrows: Really? Hold on: do they need Red Cross or FEMA?

For those of you who remember, nod with me here: is it not ironic that a few years ago, Houston saved Baton Rouge and now Baton Rouge was reluctant to return the favor?

Still, kitchens were closing and consolidating. Kitchens 6, 8, 9, 10 & 11 all consolidated into our Kitchen 6. Now I had the chance to share notes with other Kitchen Managers and ERV Coordinators and we all had the same story: the pair we began calling the “Team of Trouble” had not only sent all of us onto unnecessary special assignments, but had also blocked all of us from redeploying any of our staff to Ike. The Kitchen Managers all reported to the Team of Trouble and were getting their reviews completed by them. Sometimes, it pays to be po-dunk . . .

Here’s where my job became fun. I called my own chapter Director Jenny, who was not only in Texas for Ike, but was working alongside the Director of Red Cross Texas. That’s right: the Director of Red Cross for the State of Texas. Jenny was alarmed by what she heard and told me what to do. I followed her process step-by-step, discovered who was really in charge, put together the necessary materials, updated Jere on what Jenny had told me to do, got his approval, and went to headquarters.

It turns out this Team of Trouble was not as important as they claimed and that the real decision-maker for kitchens was another woman named Karen. Jere and the other kitchen managers recognized her name, but the Team of Trouble had been implying that Karen worked for them. Uh uh. So I arrived po-dunk fashion, heard the conversation of the people before me, including the use of Karen’s name, and learned which one Karen was. When it was my turn, I said I’d been sent by the Kitchen 6 manager with a report. Karen referred me to one of the team, who told me all the stuff she wanted us to do, which I agreed to and then said while walking over to Karen, “Our people are getting power back and we have some staff ready to deploy to Ike.” At that point, Karen pulled me aside and said, “We need to send people to Ike. Who do you have?” I showed her the report I had prepared, with the names of all staff who were eligible, willing and able to go, and she signed off on every one of them to report the following morning at 8:15 am to redeploy to Ike!

When I returned, I reported the process to the other kitchen managers who then followed the same procedure, including the use of two reports: one marked with the names of both members of the pair and another marked, “Karen.” (Later, when one of them caught onto what I was doing, he asked me my name, to which I smiled and said with twinkling “watch out!” eyes, “MY name’s Karen too!” He chuckled and said, “Oh that explains it!” – At least he’s got a sense of humor. :-) )

Directly or indirectly, I may have helped facilitate the redeployment of 26 staff to Ike. The kicker: all done by protocol. Furthermore, our Asst. Director Leisl back at home had caught wind of what was happening and she put in a call to another, even more important person she knew: the Western Deployment Director at “National” (RC in DC). He then contacted the director of the BR headquarters who responded with a swift redeployment of 40 ERVs and the 80 staff to accompany those ERVs. Liesl described his call as “a magic wand.” I thought of that wand as Gustav’s “Staff of God,” Moses-like, declaring “Let My People Go!” Once there, be “established” with Ike (see blog of 8/27). My friend Stephanie affirmed the Moses connection when she pointed out the numbers: 40 and 80.

Speaking of Gustav’s “Staff of God”: I realized the evening after I wrote that previous blog that a staff is more of a positive metaphor than a negative one: its purpose is for the shepherd to protect sheep from danger. Gustav hit the record books for the highest number of people ever to evacuate from a hurricane. Perhaps it was a fitting name after all. :-)

Red Cross Gustav

AWE

I am filled with awe about how God can use two weeks. In only two weeks, God can teach us and work through us in ways so remarkable I can not begin to wrap my head around it. Three years ago, in a two-week trip to Venezuela, God transformed all my thought paradigms so radically that my mind was cast into a hurricane for months. But I came out of it victorious. That two weeks taught me a lifetime of lessons – primarily internal. This two weeks working Red Cross Gustav also taught me a lifetime of lessons – primarily external. It was as if I had the opportunity to apply the internal lessons from the first Two Weeks in the Twilight Zone to the second Two Weeks in the Twilight Zone.

BACKGROUND

For those new to my story: in place of a New Year’s Resolution for 2005, I decided to pray to God every single day in ‘05 for a “quiet and gentle spirit.” God knew that in order to grant this prayer to me, He had to deal with two things: (1) my anxiety and (2) my nature in conflict with my environment. The second He dealt with by recreating my childhood from its earliest years, and the first He confronted by permitting me to face terror. God knew that if I could be victorious over terror, I could certainly declare it over everyday anxiety. God’s work these areas culminated with my spirit’s response to Hurricane Katrina: knowing it, in spite of the absence of any news in my proximity.

God also gave Chris a deep heart for Katrina victims, which, as most of you know, led to our work with Katrina evacuees in Baton Rouge last year. We worked alongside two totally amazing couples, Randy & Maya Knighten and Larry & Krista Lain. With Katrina more than a year in the past, I teasingly called us “tenth responders.” Longing to be more of a “first-responder,” I took classes with the Red Cross in Baton Rouge and then was badged for disaster relief back at home. Gustav was my first opportunity to deploy to a national disaster, called a “DR” in Red Cross lingo. As a newbie, I was placed at the bottom of the totem pole, an “SA” (Service Associate), but ended up with a surprising degree of authority and the opportunity to foil some politics that had been holding people back for Recovering Gustav, in spite of Desperate Ike . . .

REMARKABLE POSITIONING

When the Red Cross flew me to Dallas for Gustav, I never expected where they would send me once I arrived: Baton Rouge. I was “boomeranged” back to the very city that had trained me. Nor would I have anticipated the remarkable series of events that brought me there. It began when I joined up with two great volunteers, Wayne & Casey, with whom I drove from Dallas to Baton Rouge. RC Dallas told us to drive all the way to BR; that hotels were booked the entire way (meaning the two cities they checked, Shreveport & Alexandria); that we needed to return our rental car in BR; and that we would then need to rent a new car once we arrived, under a local (cheaper) contract (paid by RC Louisiana instead of RC Texas). After doing that, we were to head to BR headquarters for our assignment.

Here’s what really happened: we left Dallas at 2 pm, as one of the last of 8 vehicles and 40 people sent from Dallas to BR. In good traffic and non-disaster conditions, this would have put us in BR around 10 pm. But with a flow of people returning and trees and power lines down, we never could have made it that early. And if we had made it that night at all, we would have joined a number of other RC workers who were sleeping in vans, “ERVs” (“Emergency Response Vehicles” – those ambulance-like vehicles), and outside, as staff shelters were absolutely packed.

Getting hungry, we agreed to find a place to eat, but town after town had nothing and we had already passed Shreveport. I knew of a town coming up that would have something: Natchitoches. That I could even pronounce the name of this city gave me a degree of credibility, so Natchitoches it was. We arrived there sometime after 7 pm and, tired, decided to see if this “hotels booked the entire way” was really true. With “no vacancy” at place after place, it sure seemed to be, but we kept looking and found a run-down motel with one room left. It had a king-size bed, so Casey & I took it and Wayne was given an air mattress (and no pump, so he bought one himself). Thank You, Lord, for our sleep!

The next morning, we got up early to make it the rest of the way. I called Randy along the way with the news that I was headed his way, and he informed me that power was out throughout the city and surrounding region. Just in time, that prompted Wayne to realize that we had better gas up the vehicle, as gas stations would be all out of gas. He was right. We fueled up and – no joke – within a mile, the gas stations we saw were lined up with cars for great distances, and within a few miles, they were completely out of gas. Thank You, Lord, for our gas!

We had a new problem, though: our turn signals, power-operated windows (whatever was wrong with rolling them down, anyway?) and everything requiring electric power – most importantly, our air conditioning – was no longer working. After about a half-hour of hot, humid misery, I asked if we could stop to open the doors for some fresh air. “Please!” said Casey. When we did, Casey found a switch to get everything working again. Thank you, Lord, for our cool air!

The closer we came to Baton Rouge, the more we saw that this city had been far more affected by Gustav than we had anticipated. Power lines, trees and debris were strewn everywhere; houses were knocked out; and no place without the blessing of a generator had power. Traffic was congested as many were returning and street lights were out, requiring every car to make a complete stop. Gustav hit in such a way that BR was even more hard-hit than New Orleans. We thought we’d be working with evacuees, but, truly, we were working with locals.

Seeing what I saw, I said to Wayne and Casey, “We can’t rent a car in Baton Rouge! What was Dallas thinking?!” We all agreed to head straight to BR headquarters, where we reported what RC Dallas had told us to do. With head shaking, they chuckled and said there were no cars to rent in BR! They told us to go to Avis and re-rent our own vehicle under a new contract to be paid by RC Louisiana. Success. Thank you, Lord, for our vehicle!

Meanwhile, we checked in with lodging, which told us that RC National (in DC) had not informed them that our group of 40 was coming. “There was no room at the inn,” shall we say. I called Randy, who happens to own that small apartment complex above the Center. Yes, he had one open – Larry & Krista’s! I and my friends got to stay in Larry & Krista’s former two-bedroom apartment!! THANK YOU, LORD, FOR OUR FRIENDS’ APARTMENT!!

Other amazing events took place that shifted me from Sheltering into Feeding, where I needed to be in order to stay in the apartment, and brought us Dave, a fourth member of our little apartment/vehicle group. Had he not had a run-in with one of RC’s most belligerent figures at BR headquarters, he never would have met us, joined us, or had our apartment to stay in. Thank You, Lord, for difficult people that move us to better places!

So this very long post is the beginning of my story with RC Gustav. More about what we did in the next post . . .