Hurricane Katrina - my year (Part 2)

Until the official announcement that the site was ready, our contact with people who had been directly affected by hurricane Katrina had been through people working in shelters. With the announcement, we suddenly rocketed to tens of thousands of visitors to the site each day. And people did not just want to register their missing loved ones or find information, they wanted to communicate directly with someone. They were going through hell and were reaching out for help. I was prepared for how we envisaged the site would be used and what we needed to provide for people, but nothing could have prepared me for the impact of the thousands of messages and emails that started coming in. It is these messages and the people with whom I developed relationships that have changed my life forever.

I was the point of all contact with the site and as we felt it was important that people kept the same contact in any communications, I took on the responsibility of responding to all messages. I did not want people to send their messages and have to wait ages for a reply, so my email software stayed connected, bringing down the messages as they arrived, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even at the peak of incoming messages, it was rare for any person who needed help to have to wait more than a couple of hours before they got a reply. Due to time constraints, the emails that did not get quick replies were the ones from the press and other media. That was a bit of a catch-22 situation - we had the resources available for people who desperately needed them and the media were able to get the word out that the site was there, but I was personally too busy helping people to take time out with media requests. Peter was also extremely busy, but his limited English presented difficulties for US media. We also learned early on that media that expressed a great interest in what we were doing suddenly lost interest when they realised we were not US citizens or even living in the US. I would often find myself waiting for calls from reporters at around 3am or 4am my time, take time to answer their questions, only to find that there was no interest by them in running the story once they learned I was in New Zealand.

Within ten days of Katrina, we were getting our first identifications of bodies, and the emails continued to flood in. In those first few weeks, many people told me that they had sent messages to every agency that had been set up to assist in the disaster, but that nobody else had replied. While I understand the difficulties in managing so many calls for help, in many cases the only reply that was necessary was one to say that their message had been received, it would definitely be acted on, and that someone cared. Katrina was a dehumanising experience for people. They were going through enormous personal trauma, were frightened, confused, and needed to know that someone was prepared to do something for them, and perhaps just as importantly, that the agency they reached out to recognised them as individuals and respected them as such. I am not a social worker and have had no training in grief counselling. When the first messages started coming in, they hit me very hard. That hasn’t changed - I am still brought to tears by messages that are coming in today.

Professionals are probably taught how to make soothing, but essentially unemotional, responses. Professionals know how to keep their own emotions from being battered. I couldn’t. I am just a normal human being and a mother. And very aware that what happened in the Gulf States could happen to any one of us at any time. The messages were heartbreaking (and still are) but they have also been a blessing. Through my correspondence, I now have an insight into the human impact of hurricane Katrina and, in many cases, the real stories that the headlines didn’t tell. These stories need to be told and I hope that one day they will be. I understand Spike Lee’s documentary, “When the levees broke” tells it how it was, as much as it can in just 4 hours.

I watched a National Geographic documentary last week about hurricane Katrina and couldn’t help think that it was a sanitised version. At one point, they commented on the exaggerated stories of looting and other crime that was alleged to have occurred in New Orleans. They claimed 4 bodies had been recovered from the New Orleans Convention Center, one of which was a homicide and the other three were deaths from natural causes. What is natural about dying from lack of water, shelter and food? But, more to the point, they did not mention the death of a family man, in front of his family, from being shot by a Police officer. This was an unjustified slaying that devasted a family that had already been through far too much. I still see D’s face in front of me as I write this, and the photograph that appeared on news reports all across the United States and was even beamed into my living room in New Zealand, with D. lying on the pavement, his little grandson beside him along with other family members. They were transported from the Convention Center, leaving his body behind. They did everything one could imagine to ensure his body was identified, yet still had weeks and weeks of agony when he went “missing”.

I could tell you about the autistic children who were unable to communicate but who were forcibly separated from parents and caregivers, who are still trying to find where the children were sent to. Or about the disabled people, separated from their service dogs and sent to shelters with no facilities for them. Or the infirm elderly who were packed off to rest homes thousands of miles from home, whose families have spent months trying to locate them. I could tell you of the woman, rescued from her rooftop who insisted for months that rescuers had left her husband behind. He was later found, drowned, in his attic where he had been left. Or about the couple who were holed up in their home where one eventually starved to death. Their door had been marked to show the house had been searched. Someone probably had been by, may even have knocked on the door. The couple were both deaf.

I am not going to tell you these stories. I have given you an insight into the tragedies I know of from my correspondence, but these stories are for the people of New Orleans and the Gulf State areas that were affected to tell. They are their stories. And when they start telling them, everyone had better take care to listen.

In many cases, I have shared in these experiences for months, as we continue to keep in contact while I keep trying to locate people. I have gotten to know entire families through our email correspondence and for some, I am now sharing in their experiences as they try to rebuild their lives. I know that when we have been able to locate missing people, our work has been worthwhile. I hope too, that I have been able to help in some small way even where we have been unable to find the missing. Does it help that I care? Probably not much. But it has changed my life.

This is the second part of my Hurricane Katrina series. More will follow over this week.