I'm supposed to start work tomorrow as a volunteer Family Service Technician at a service center in a state close to Louisiana. (Really anonymous?) This means I meet with survivors, get their info about who they are and what they need, and get it for them. (Or direct them to the path. They are ultimately responsible for their own recovery; we just give a boost and support. The first person to accuse me of codependent enabling gets his throat torn out and a one-way forced march to Lake New Orleans.)
I am so scared.I'm scared because this relief effort is so screwed. Most of New Orleans has been relocated to my state. We got one shelter set up Thursday; I may not start with the center tomorrow because we may have to open another shelter for 5000.
After 9/11 I vowed never to be so helpless in face of disaster. Go shopping, indeed! The only thing that makes me feel better is to assist in the recovery. I joined a relief agency, took training, went out on local disaster calls for a year before I was called to south Louisiana in 2002. Two hurricanes and one tornado in a month. Yup, disaster.
Hundreds (thousands?) of us poured into New Orleans. The convention center, I think. We spent a day getting processed and then were turned loose with a map and a car to report to various shelters and service centers across the coast. I had the sense of being part of a machine--a big, lumbering, not quite efficient machine, but a machine that sort of worked. I was infuriated at the lack of resources. I wondered why I couldn't get $9 school uniforms while 9/11 families received $1.86 million.
My sense now is the machine is broken. I don't know what we have to offer people, if anything. I spent one basically useless day at the shelter. I've no idea why they sent me there. The director handed me a bunch of shelter intake forms and said, "Go through these." Go through these for what? And why are we telling everybody to come register at the shelter even if they're not staying here when we don't have anything to give them, and the little form is so worthless from the point of assessing needs--or contacting them again. And people were not happy about having been told to drive across town, wasting gas they couldn't afford, for nothing but a jelly donut. They'll have to come to a service center to get properly registered for aid. The shelter wasn't doing the job I was sent for. I took the NO evacuee staying in my home to get him into the system; it was a waste of his time, too. And emotionally hard on him.
I'm not shy; I pointed out my other skills and asked what I could do and where I should report to. I never received an answer and finally went home, feeling like I'd wasted the day when it wasn't like I didn't have a life full of other commitments.
And why is it almost a week after we knew there was a need, and we don't have operational shelters and coordinated service centers?
To give you an idea of response times: If I'd joined the air disaster team, that would mean I'd be on site 24 hours after the call, which would come right after the plane went down. Searching for and collecting body parts was beyond my stomach's capacity, so I joined the general disaster team. I'm expected to be on site 3 days after I'm called, which is supposed to be as soon as the need is known. And we're volunteers. So how soon would you say that people whose *ing job it is should be on the job?
Oh, and the 100s (1000s?) of aid workers are not coming. We'll manage with locals. In my specialty, we have 5 experienced people, the shelter manager told me. They're training 20 more tomorrow morning.
I am very scared.
If I survive tomorrow, I'll post my experiences here. That will be my answer to the person asked me in a comment how aid work is. Not a 25-word-or-less answer. Also how-you-can-help stuff, and generally whatever it seems to me that ought to be known.
Onward, Christian-Jewish-Muslim-atheist-etc. soldiers.