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Hurricane Rita: A Daily Journal - continued
Barb Dorrington

Sunday October 2/05

Today I took some time off and went shopping. Therapy for me is buying shoes and I bought three pairs of them (sorry Ron) but they were a great deal. It felt great to have a change of pace and I am feeling more energetic today. When I arrived at Lackland, the first person I see is David, Mashunda’s father. He didn’t know me but I introduced myself. It is evident that he doesn’t trust me and seems a little annoyed that his daughter expressed concern about him. Eventually, he warms up after making some comments about my being white and not really understanding his culture but these types of comments fade away as we talk for almost two hours. It turns out that David did struggle through water to escape after the levee broke, but he didn’t want to talk too much about that. However he did mention that he was trapped with his wife on the roof of the house for hours, and it seemed like everyone else was getting rescued but him. Eventually, the water rose too high, and David and his wife were in the water, and then guardsmen in a boat rescued them.

David said the saddest part for him about the rescue is that the guardsmen were told only to rescue people in the actual water because there weren’t enough people to rescue everyone on the rooftops. This left him wondering how many others dies while waiting on their roofs. He recalls spending four days at the Convention Centre, and it was horrible…there was little food and very little water. The heat was blistering and he remembers how hard it was to drink hot water out of a bottle. At one point, he started to talk to one of the helpers, and she had some cold coke in a cooler. When she offered to give him one, he said he could have fallen down and cried. The hardest part for him was not being able to find places to go to the bathroom. At first, the washrooms could be used, but the stench became unbearable from the excrement and people stopped using them, choosing instead to go anywhere they could find a little privacy. David recalls how hard it was to find a place to go, and that many had to resort to urinating and defecating in front of other evacuees. The National Guard had nowhere to store dead bodies, many being sick and previously infirm…they just didn’t make it. The decision was made to store the bodies in the bathrooms because they weren’t being used anyway. David reported that the stench filled the air almost everywhere he went, and he couldn’t get it out of his head for a long time. Although he never saw anyone die, he heard about the rapes and murders and lived in fear those four days.

Most of the conversation centered on how sad David felt to be here with his wife. He stated that his wife had an affair on him 25 years ago, and he retaliated in kind. Since that period, they haven’t been close emotionally, and he often feels lost and alone. Usually his wife and daughter blame him for being an angry and difficult man, but he thinks he would be very different if he felt that his wife supported him more. He said it would be the best thing that could happen to him if she gave him a hug and she meant it. I encouraged David to seriously consider marriage counseling as well as trauma counseling, and he reports he isn’t against it, but after 35 years of marriage, he doesn’t think much will change their current relationship. When asked what is the worst of all of this, David reported that his wife doesn’t love him, and that his marriage is a sham. It was time for dinner, and so we finish talking. Although he said this conversation was hard, he appreciates the chance to share and he indicates that he felt understood for the first time in a long time.

It is good to see Stephanie walking around chatting with people. It is easy to see that she is struggling a bit now as she walks, more like waddles, with her baby about to be born. Stephanie is a woman of few words, but she does give me a picture that she drew and wants me to have it…it is of a heart and a flower (similar to the one Raymond drew) but this one has tears coming out of it which then forms into a little pool. Just like with her first picture, Stephanie doesn’t want to tell a story about it. Maybe tomorrow.

Ernest rolls by in his wheelchair and gives a bog friendly wave. Flying by him is a woman called Ace who wants to know who “designs” on her man. Within a few minutes, she asks me that outright, and I tell her ‘no’ outright but that Ernest and I share a love of art together and we had quite a conversation last night. She asks if her name came up and I say yes it did, but Ernest talked mostly about himself and his escape from the waters. Ace told me that she lives only about six blocks from Ernest and that she barely escaped with her life. After the levee broke, the water by her apartment rose from just a few feet to over 26 feet. Ace indicates that she is legally blind, although she can see a few things up close. Suddenly, Ace found herself completely immersed in the water and she could barely see. She was trying to get her bearings to swim instead of being taken away by the current, but her head was smashed into a couple of telephone poles, completely dislodging the muscles in her eye, so now her one eye is totally blind.

Ace cried a bit as she talked, but looked mostly wide-eyed. This is something that I find really astonishing, how few tears there have been overall as the evacuees tell their story. Ace reveals how frightened she is as the water gushes over her head, and she frequently has to struggle to reach the surface of the water. Over and over, she tells me that she cannot believe she is “all wet and in the water” She knows that her neighbor, a man with cerebral palsy, could never have made it and she remembers thinking about him a lot as she tries to swim. Eventually, she finds another telephone pole to hang onto. As she waits to be rescued, she sees her friend Michelle float by with her baby and she knows that they will never make it. Michelle is barely alive when she sees her, and Ace isn’t even sure if she was alive at the time, because she can barely see. Ace does cry a bit as she talks about how Michelle had six sons and this seventh baby was a little girl…Ace wonders why the Lord would take Michelle and the baby away like this. This is what makes her really angry. She says she is having a lot of trouble getting the images out of her head, and Michelle was a very special friend to her. Ace has no idea as to the whereabouts of Michelle’s other children or whether she made it.

Ace was finally rescued and sent to the Superdome. Here, Ernest has Ace tightly gripped on his lap in the wheelchair and he is hugging her. Ace indicates this support from Ernest is also what keeps her sane. At the superdome, Ace seems to talk almost devoid of any noticeable feeling and she says that she actually saw a teenaged boy shoot a National guardsman to his death (I later learn that no one knows about a guardsman dying but they have heard that one was shot by an evacuee). She then saw him go into the women’s bathroom to escape detection, but there is a code there not to turn anyone in, so she doesn’t. There is a sense of power that she knows about this and doesn’t tell anyone. Ace has many other images swimming around in her head from the Superdome, and mentions that she recalls seeing many people lying very quietly, possibly dead, but she cannot see that well. What she can see is a little girl, about ten years old, who is not dead, but is lying staring into space. She has no clothes on below her waist and her legs are very swollen. Ace figures she has been raped many times and has been left out like garbage. There is so much violence and danger, that she knows that she cannot reach out to help, it is all she can do to help herself. Ace suggests that she cannot forgive herself for not helping and we talk a long time about what she could realistically have done, given her own health. She agrees that she needs a lot of counseling and says that she will get it once she gets out of the shelter. Tonight though, she is upset because she has just come back from the doctor’s and he has told her she has a horrible bladder infection and she is still having a lot of skin trouble from the contaminated water. Ace feels the trauma will never end.

As I am leaving the shelter tonight, I go on the Internet briefly and as I am working, a young disabled man comes by to say that his fiancée is missing and could I please call the Austin shelter to see of she is safe. I have no idea where the shelter could be, and I am sure Austin has more than one shelter, so I do the only thing I can do, and leave the shelter manager a written note to ask her if she could search for his fiancé tomorrow, as she would likely know the names of the shelters in Austin. He is at least grateful for this little help and understands that answers often don’t come fast.

Tomorrow is my last meeting with Richard for a debriefing. Although I need a break, and must return home, I am very sad about leaving. There is certainly an attachment that develops as one tries to debrief with the same families over a number of days. My biggest worry is that they will survive and get the counseling help they need over time.

As I am leaving, Ace gives me a huge hug and reports she doesn’t know what it is exactly, but she feels better…more together. And she thanks me. Somehow, I feel I ought to be thanking her for our conversation and seeing her spirit and tenacity defy all odds.

Monday October 3/05

It was good to do some debriefing with Richard. I heard from the operations staff that BCFS has offered debriefing for any staff member who requests it. There is also rumor that when this is all over, referring to the shelters being open for Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, each staff member will get some special kind of bonus, not yet determined or made public. There was also a woman who came into the offices today with pictures of the Waco shelter. I wasn’t there to view them but other volunteer staff described them as horrific, with most of the toilets being outdoor portable toilets. As many of the evacuees had physical problems and some had wheelchairs, the excrement and urine began to fill up the floor of these toilets forcing people to go wherever they could. About fifty evacuees remained at the Wal-Mart with the remainder having already been moved to the VA hospital where conditions were described as excellent. Much frustration was expressed about the conditions with a number of the remaining fifty evacuees pleading to have visiting staff take them “home” to Levi in San Antonio.

Lackland was pretty quiet today with many evacuees trying to go to social security and other places to get checks so they can start making plans to leave the shelter. Today was also a day that I noticed the mood had become somber and there seemed to be tension that filled the air. Many of these evacuees have been living together for over a month. Ernest seemed overly distraught because his feet were hurting a lot today (from the infection from the flood waters) and Ace was constantly accusing him of ‘messing around’ with other women. Apparently, Ernest had been talking to a lady about his check, and this caused Ace to fly into a rage. I tried to help Ernest understand that Ace may be feeling very insecure right now and Ernest mentioned that she had come from a very abusive childhood and that many men had treated her very badly in her life. Yet, at the same time, Ernest felt that Ace’s jealousies were too much to handle. When asked how long they had been together as a couple, I was surprised to learn that they had only become romantically involved while they had been staying in the shelter, although they had known each other as friends for over a year. Ernest has many of the remaining art supplies and has agreed to give children in the shelter art lessons. I hope this happens.

David and Stephanie were also quiet today and David seemed to be discouraged by how slow it had become to try to get money. While other evacuees in this shelter were almost all Katrina evacuees, David and Stephanie were Rita evacuees and this means a longer wait for the money, if it ever comes. Both David and Stephanie admitted to being very tired, not only physically, but also just drained mentally. New wristbands were being given out today again, I haven’t really talked about the wristbands that much, but David tells me they are very useful because they are like an entry into getting some services free, like bus service, or getting a deal on food, and of course, for some of the Katrina evacuees, getting some free hotel time away from the shelter.

Terry was the last evacuee that I talked to as I left today. She was thrilled to be given the last journal I had, and asked me to e-mail her when I could, handing me a piece of paper with her e-mail address on it. She wants to write her story, and needs an editor. Terry remains hopeful in terms of beating the cancer. She should have purchased a truck through auction by the weekend and will be leaving the shelter with her grandparents shortly after that.

Addendum

On the way home, I had an overpowering desire to go to the movies. I have often done this before when I need a break from everything. I especially like really tension-producing or scary movies, and that is exactly the kind of movie I watched. It is a start back to reality and my usual routines. Although this part of the journey has ended, I am hopeful that I will be able to make sense of all of this in terms of telling the story of the evacuees and how effective debriefing can be after a natural disaster strikes. For this, journaling my own daily involvement has been very useful and also healing.

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