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. :-)