Wow, what an amazing day I had yesterday. Houston has become a receiving point for so many of the refugees from New Orleans, Alabama and Mississippi. Until yesterday, I had found the use of the word "refugee" and not "evacuee" an interesting one. Based on the conversations with the multitudes of people whom I had met there, the city really is as bad as it appears on television, and the likelihood of a return anytime soon seems remote, thus making the term refugee very much appropriate.
Originally, I had just planned to spend a few hours down at the Astrodome volunteering with some friends, one of whom had been down the day before. The way that she described it, it was very disorganized and if you wanted to help out, you really had to take matters into your own hands. She wasn't kidding. I have so far been really upset with all of the finger pointing and the "what could have beens" from the media and government officials, but I just have to vent a little bit of frustration with the complete and utter lack of coordination by those people who are ostensibly in charge down there, and further the complete waste of volunteer workforce. When I arrived at Reliant Stadium, I was a bit surprised to see a staging area for potential volunteers holding about 200 people. They were all sitting around waiting for something to do. According to my friend who had been down the day before, she spent about two hours waiting for someone to give her something to do. I understand fully that there comes a point where you have too many volunteers, but as will become apparent as you read on, there was ample opportunity to put these people to work.
Not being one to just stand around and wait for something to do, I told the lady at volunteer registration that I had been there the day before and was going to return to my post. This wasn't true, of course, but I couldn't stomach waiting around. One little lie and we were off with our wristbands, basically taking our cue from our friend who was down the day before.
I can't really put into words the enormity of the despair inside the Astrodome. For those of you who have been to sporting events, you know that feeling as you walk out of the tunnel into the seating area when you first get a glimpse of the field. It's pretty awesome. Well, this time through, the field was an endless sea of cots, inhabited by families and individuals who have been to hell and back. Certainly a different feel than a ballgame.
I spent the first hour or so running "errands" for the families on the floor. They would stop you and request socks, shoes, pants, you name it, and we would run to the staging area to find the goods. This was a great way to hear stories, connect with people, listen to them and let them be heard, all the while getting them a little piece or normalcy. The vast majority of the folks that we helped were so happy to receive these items, and their feelings were genuine. There were some, mostly teenagers, who were taking advantage, who were more than willing to express displeasure with a certain item of clothing, and had no compunction whatsoever about asking you to go back multiple times. I was happy to do it, but a little dismayed at the lack of any "thank yous" or manners from these individuals. However, this was more than outweighed by the older folks who were more than gracious and who reached out with hugs and thank yous.
I was about 2pm that I decided that something needed to be done about the distribution and logistics of the clothes and basic necessities. It was shocking to me to discover, after quite a bit of asking around, that there was little in the way of active management and no one seemed to know who was in charge. There were plenty of Red Cross people running around, but I'm pretty certain that they weren't really minding the store of the logistics of goods distribution. There were completely disorganized piles of goods, and some piles were growing faster than others, due in large part to the demand on the floor. No one seemed to understand that you need to get this stuff grouped by type, and make the goods that are moving quickly easily accessible, and move the low use items to the back. Before I knew what was going on, I was in charge of about twenty people and we were quickly bringing order to the madness. The friends I had come down with helped take over the clothing organization, so we focused on the hard goods (toiletries, baby products, etc).
Not for nothing, but it appeared to me that if not for the active leadership by a few non-Red Cross personnel, the logistics of the distribution would have been a complete failure. There was a young lady by the name of Theresa who had basically taken over the front room operation. This is a woman who was a Louisiana native. She had lost everything, and yet here she was, volunteering at the shelter, and taking control of a highly disordered process, working for 15-18 hours at a shot ever since she arrived at the Astrdome. Did she rub some feathers? Yup. Was she difficult to get along with? Somewhat. Did that matter? Not really. I was very much impressed by her complete disregard for her own station, and the fact that she saw a need and filled it. She decided to do something about it. So a small confederation of non-Red Cross workers, including myself, were basically running the show for good distribution at the Astrodome. I worked about an 11 hours sift, and it was very much well worth it. I would have stayed longer if I didn't have to get my friends back home.
There were more than a few periods where we could have used more hands. The line up of folks looking for basic necessities was stretching quite a ways, maybe 100 people deep. There weren't enough runners, at times, to service all of the incoming requests. Given that there was more than 200 people "waiting for assignments" in the staging area, it is surprising how this could come to pass. However, throughout the day, the more volunteers to whom I spoke, the more evident it became that there was a constant shortage of hands.
This discussion wouldn't be any fun without a quick review of the law of unintended circumstances:
- Apparently, Medicaid and WIC in the state of Louisiana gives out Similac Advance with Iron baby formula. As any mother who has used formula will tell you, once you start your child on one type, you don't change. Because of this one tiny thing, there was TONS of basically unusable Isomil and other variants of baby formula.
- To some, hearing that others have lost everything, and donations are needed means bring skis, boots and poles.
- I am not sure that I can ever understand the need of the nations youth to wear 3 and 4 XL shirts, but when, erm, size of most of the folks in this country is beginning to expand, and further, folks in the state of Louisiana, specifically New Orleans, have been deemed by Men's Fitness magazine as one of the fattest (well behind many TX cities I might add), you end up with a run on large t-shirts for those needing clothing, and ample supply of smalls and mediums.
What did I learn yesterday? Well, for starters, there are a great many people in the city of Houston who want to help those affected, and that's a great and wonderful thing. Second, I learned that many more people seek to avoid positions of leadership, and in fact want to be led, than those who seek out leadership positions. Third, despite my deep desire to believe otherwise, I was sorely disappointed by the the apparent lack of chain of command and abilities of those "in charge" at the Astrodome. A constant complaint from volunteers was how long it took for them to be given something to do, and how they were being yelled at by those people who were supervising. I am sure that folks were under tremendous pressure, but yelling at would be volunteers is simply not acceptable. Lastly, it became clear to me that this Astrodome situation isn't going to go away any time soon. Given the enormity of the destruction in the Gulf Coast, and the fact that many of those affected are in fact without many means, it's going to be an interesting social experiment on the social services structure of the city of Houston, and frankly all of the major metro areas of Texas, to handle the incoming folks.
I was very happy to be able to volunteer this time around. I missed out on 9/11, having been trapped in San Francisco and incapable of getting back to New York until a week afterward. It was nice to be able to give back and help out. I'm working on something with one of my old employers to have an even bigger impact. Should I be able to bring that to pass, I'll blog on that later.
