PEP, October 2005: Katrina: Storm sweeps away lives

Before Katrina, America’s greatest natural disaster hit in 1927, when the mighty Mississippi River broke its levees and spread death and destruction across a six-state area.

Conservative President Calvin Coolidge believed so strongly in small government that his administration took no action to feed or shelter the thousands of devastated evacuees.
Over 10,000 people, mainly African Americans, were stranded atop a levee at Greenville, Miss., with no food or drinkable water for several days. Finally, enough boats to rescue them all arrived — but only whites were allowed to board.

In the current disaster, the body count was approaching 1,000 as PEP went to press. Untold thousands of people have lost everything they own to the storm. Lives have been uprooted. Whole cities, towns and communities are submerged under water.

In the weeks since the hurricane hit land Aug. 29, its devastation has exposed many ugly facets of American life. The whole country got a crash course on the class and racial divide that determined who was evacuated and who was left to drown — a split that exists nationwide but is seldom revealed so starkly.

Horrifying headlines and photos depicted a depth of human misery and staggering poverty that many thought was unimaginable in the United States.

The importance of protecting coastal wetlands and upgrading the levees and underwater pumps is getting attention that’s been lacking for years. The gross mismanagement of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is now out in the open. The inability of the Dept. of Homeland Security to deal with a natural catastrophe is calling into question the ability of the behemoth bureaucracy to deal with acts of terrorism.

Generous response
The hurricane also brought forth a magnificent human response to the suffering. Americans across the country are coming to the aid of the victims, collecting unprecedented sums of relief funds and organizing caravans of donated food and clothing. Unions nationwide have rallied to provide aid to their brothers and sisters in the stricken states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

AFSCME, the parent union of DC 37, immediately organized relief efforts that included donations of money, supplies, and an “Adopt a Family” program. AFSCME kicked in the first $100,000 and DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts urged members and locals to contribute to the AFSCME effort through DC 37. Hundreds of public sector employees have made the trip south to offer assistance, including Police Officers, Firefighters, Public Health Nurses and Emergency Medical Service workers.

Joseph Hudak, a Paramedic Instructor at the Fire Department’s EMS Training Academy, is a 17-year veteran member of Local 2507, the Uniformed EMTs and Paramedics. He serves with an Urban Search and Rescue team that was flown to a military base outside New Orleans on a C-130 transport plane.

For one week, Hudak and his team braved armed looters and toxic water to carry out rescue missions on the flooded streets of New Orleans. They guided their Zodiac boats to the roofs of submerged buildings and picked up survivors.

“It was a phenomenal experience,” said Hudak. “I enjoy rescue work. There are eight of us in our unit and we are a very tight group.”

Sarah Chiarini, a Firefighter from Rhode Island fresh from paramedic training, joined up with Hudak’s team. “The devastation was incredible,” she explained. “Basically, we were traveling through these neighborhoods past bodies floating in the water. It was surreal. I was struck by how quiet it was, how silent.”

The team saved over 50 people. “We rescued a 74-year-old man on our first day,” said Chiarini. “He was delusional, dehydrated and combative. We had to get into the water to get him into the boat. That made the day worthwhile,” she said. Both the veteran and the novice described the conditions in the same way — hot, humid and nasty. “A lot of people are going to get sick,” Hudak predicted. “There is so much waste and bacteria in the water. We saw so many people who were homeless.”

Local efforts
Other New York City employees are offering their services to the evacuees on the home front. On Sept. 15, the city opened a welcoming center for victims of the storm. Clerical Division Representative Wendell Reid attended the opening. “People were coming in off the buses to get help,” he said. “They looked distraught.” By Friday evening, more than 300 people had arrived at the center, which is based on a model developed to help bereaved families after 9/11. Many agencies are contributing expert staff, mainly members of DC 37 locals, to help the traumatized victims. Public Health Nurses in Local 436 were among the first on the scene.

Other members of DC 37 have been directly touched by the hurricane. Some have taken displaced family members into their homes. Some DC 37 staff and members are still looking for missing kin. Social Service Employees Union Local 371 member Adzua Opare, a Child Welfare Specialist, experienced the devastation firsthand. She was vacationing in New Orleans when Katrina struck.

Accompanied by her elderly grandmother, she slogged for miles through the streets to seek shelter at the Superdome. After arriving back in New York City, she was still shaken by the ordeal. “Mentally, I’m still going through this stuff. I kept wanting to ask for the American Embassy,” she said.

Three weeks after the hurricane hit, FEMA was still offering a feeble response. On Sept. 17, the New York Times blasted the inept agency in a page one headline: “FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort.”

In moves that are eerily reminiscent of its policies in Iraq, the Bush administration touts its omnibus aid package, as the same jumbo private contractors (such as Halliburton) that walked off with no-bid contracts in the war zone are now being used to rebuild. The president is still in denial on the causal relation between global warming, the erosion of the coastal wetlands, the cut in levee repair funds and the extreme devastation wrought by Katrina. Bush has pledged billions of dollars to repair and rebuild the areas demolished by the storm, but his conservative supporters want to generate the funds through deep cuts in other social programs.

Apparently, they have learned little since the days of Calvin Coolidge.