Hurricane Isaac Relief: "Bringing people together to help them get through the worst day, or sometimes weeks, of their lives."

Sam Kille speaks with Jim Cantore, of The Weather Channel, about the Red Cross response to Hurricane Isaac. Behind them is a flooded neighborhood in Slidell, LA., just one of many communities impacted by Hurricane Isaac.

By Sam Kille, Greater New York’s regional communications director, was deployed to Louisiana for a week as part of the American Red Cross Advanced Public Affairs Team (APAT). APAT members are tasked with sharing the story of Red Cross disaster relief with the media, working in federal or state emergency operations centers as public information liaisons, and gathering photos and video clips to share through www.redcross.org and on social media.

Being more than a thousand miles away, during a time when politics is grabbing most of the headlines, it’s easy to forget that Hurricane Isaac slammed the Gulf Coast last week. It’s a little harder for me though, because I spent just over a week there—before, during and after landfall.

As an American Red Cross worker for more than five years, I’ve worked a few coastal storms. I actually felt a great sense of déjà vu, revisiting many areas of Louisiana that I worked in following Hurricane Gustav in 2008.

Yet this storm definitely was different. The rain and wind sat atop of us for 24 hours straight. The power outages were massive and there were several floods. Places like Plaquemines Parish were under 10 feet of water.

Even after landfall, things didn’t get any better—very unsettling was the news of an evacuation of nearly 50,000 people in Tangipahoa Parish due to a potential dam breach. There’s a certain sense of “what’s wrong with this picture” when headed toward trouble, driving unimpeded on an interstate in one direction, while the opposite is filled with traffic.

Thousands of people turned to the Red Cross for safe shelter because of Isaac. At one point, shelters were open from Florida to Texas. Even a week later, many are still waking up in shelters in Louisiana and Mississippi.

I had the opportunity to visit a shelter in Hammond, La. Half of the nearly 300 evacuees had been there for days. They had heeded government warnings and smartly evacuated their low-lying communities surrounding New Orleans. Yet now, they were tired and worried about whether or not they had homes to return to.

The rest were new evacuees from Tangipahoa—they left their homes with little warning—many with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Most disasters have a heightened sense of emotion and stress—yet the timing of Hurricane Isaac couldn’t have been worse—the 7th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Now, by no means was this a Katrina, but for those who survived it, old wounds were reopened.

While I heard many stories, there is one I cannot shake. “Queen” as she likes to be called, is a waitress at a restaurant in New Orleans. When the city flooded following Katrina, many in her neighborhood sought refuge in a school that was on higher ground. They were even fortunate enough to have a boat they could use to get in and out.

One day, they saw a woman walking through more than four feet of water. She had a child in each arm, their heads resting on her shoulders. Queen and her neighbors kept yelling out, “Stop! We have a boat, we’re coming for you.” The woman kept walking despite their warnings. Unlike the residents who knew where the hazards in the street were, the woman didn’t. In horror, Queen watched as the woman walked over an open storm drain—sucked in, three lives lost in an instant.

Yet despite the fear of what the future holds for many in the Gulf, I did witness many moments of hope. In Westwego, I visited a mobile feeding kitchen being operated by the Southern Baptist Convention, a partner of the Red Cross. There, 35,000 warm meals are being cooked each day and then loaded onto Red Cross emergency response vehicles which fan out into affected communities. And this is only one site!

Even in the shelters, people are adapting and making the best of their circumstances. In Hammond, I watched two dozen kids gleefully set the place settings in the cafeteria for dinner. The shelter manager had found that by putting the kids to work, it cured their boredom (after all, no TV or video games) and gave them a sense of community.

And that’s what the American Red Cross is all about—bringing people together to help them get through the worst day, or sometimes weeks, of their lives.

Sadly, the damage in the Gulf is far greater than most probably realize. While the Red Cross is doing all it can, it truly needs your help. Shelters remain open and vital supplies are still being distributed. Please consider a donation today by visiting redcross.org, calling 1-800-RED-CROSS, or by texting REDCROSS to 90999, to give $10.

What the Red Cross Means to Me

By Gordon Williams

I've been a Disaster Planning and Response volunteer at the Greater New York Red Cross for the past seven years—six as a disaster responder and the past year as a dispatcher in the Emergency Communications Center. But I’ve been running after fire engines a lot longer than that.

My dad was a newspaperman in Chicago, who couldn’t resist racing to the scene of a hot story. The radio in every car he owned was modified to receive police and fire calls. More than once as a child, I remember being awakened by my dad in the middle of the night and told, “There's a great fire, let's go.”

“Howard, the boy needs his sleep,” my mom would say. “Nonsense,” my dad would answer, and off we would go, driving through the dark toward an orange glow in the sky.

My father knew the men at the local fire house and I spent many Sunday mornings there—dad chatting with the firefighters and me climbing over the apparatus. My favorite perch was the tiller seat—the secondary steering wheel at the back of a hook-and-ladder, used to steer the rig around tight corners.

Chasing Fire Engines for a Living

My first job was as a police reporter on a Chicago newspaper, covering crime and fires. Ever hear of a fire burning 14 days? This one was in a refrigerated warehouse, with cork-insulated walls a foot thick. Day-after-day the fire burned through the cork, one floor after another collapsing until the whole building was a mountain of ruble. I stopped off each morning on my way to work, looking for fresh angles to the story.

The worst fire I ever covered came on the day in 1958 I formally presented an engagement ring to my then-fiancé (now my wife of 53 years). I gave her the ring, put her on a train back to college and went off to cover the Our Lady of Angels fire. The fire had burned through a parochial school on Chicago's West Side, killing 92 children and three nuns. More than a half-century later, the awful images of that day remain vivid in my mind.

My career in journalism went off in a different direction—from reporting on crime and disaster to covering business and global finance I spent 20 years as a writer and editor on Business Week magazine and 13 years as network business correspondent on television and radio for ABC News.

My First Tries at Volunteering

I retired from ABC in 1994 to start my own consulting business. Over the years I got involved in various volunteer activities. For example, I was one of five members of a committee created to bring the mission and message of a big national charity into the 21st century.

All my volunteer work seemed to involve endless meetings that led to reports and recommendations that ultimately never seemed to lead anywhere at all. I spent a lot of time and effort, but never saw anyone receiving any direct benefit from my work.

Volunteering With a Difference

Hurricane Katrina jolted me awake as it did many people. I went to the old Red Cross building on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan and signed up for training as a disaster responder. And that opened the door to what for me has been “volunteering with a difference.” I have attended few meetings, written no reports at all. What I have had is countless opportunities to provide direct, face-to-face help to people whose need for help is critical.

Actually my first major response in 2006 is still one of my most memorable—a four-alarm apartment house fire in Queens that left 65 people homeless in 17 non-habitable apartments. It was my third training shift and only the second for Melody, my fellow responder in training. Red Cross supervisors Danny Reyes and Jean Sylla raced upstairs to start the disaster assessments. Melody and I found the only lighted dry spot in the building—the basement laundry room—and started registering clients for Red Cross assistance. We wound up transporting two busloads of clients to a nearby motel.

Hitting the High Points

So what are the high points of seven years as a Red Cross volunteer?

It has been exciting. There’s no telling when a shift begins, what will happen. You might spend the shift at the chapter, never going out. Or you might spend a frantic night, going from one incident to the next. After one very busy night, another responder and I were having a pre-dawn meal in a fast food place in Queens—a late dinner or an early breakfast, we never decided.

Our clothes were damp and smeared with soot. We both gave off a decidedly pungent smell of smoke. The other responder looked at me and said he doubted that anyone else in New York City had spent the evening quite as we had. Not since my days as a working journalist have I experienced the adrenalin rush that some of my Red Cross responses have given me.

I think New York is the greatest city in the world and being a Red Cross volunteer has given me an active and fulfilling role to play in the life of my city. As volunteers we become part of New York in a way few people ever experience. Eight million people live in New York, and we are among those who make a difference.

The Satisfaction of Giving Back

I had a great career. At any given time, fewer than 200 people are correspondents for one of the big broadcast networks. For 13 years, I was one of them. I would like to think my talent accounted for that. The truth is I was blessed with great gobs of sheer good luck—being in the right place at the right time. I caught plenty of lucky breaks and now it’s time to give something to those who aren't as lucky as I was.

And that is the ultimate reward for being a Red Cross volunteer—meeting someone who has just gone through the worst experience of their lives and being able to help. We often get tired and wet and filthy on the job. Sometimes we have to take risks to do a damage assessment. In the end, being the first to offer help to someone who desperately needs help makes it all more than worthwhile.

--Gordon Williams, NY, NY

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