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MY RED CROSS ADVENTURE: A view from the trenches By Param Singh The volunteer in the Shelter office was in her early twenties. “Would you mind working in a staff shelter in West Palm Beach?” she asked us sweetly. Then she explained that a staff shelter was a place where Red Cross volunteers, like us, were housed until hotel rooms became available. Her tone suggested it was not a plum assignment. The stated Red Cross policy is to house volunteers in a shelter only as a last resort. A cardinal rule of my retirement is to avoid positions of authority, but my eagerness to get to work got in the way. After all I had being hanging around Hurricane Wilma headquarters at the Sheraton in Miami for most of the day with nothing to do. I had received the call to deploy for three weeks on a Thursday evening in early November and by early Saturday I was on a plane. Sunday morning I had rushed to be “in processed” only to be told that there were no personnel requests from the field. Hurry, hurry, wait and wait. I offered to help in the maze of offices at headquarters but there were no takers – the work load appeared somewhat underwhelming to my untrained eye. So when she further asked whether anyone would volunteer to be the Shelter Manager, I was so eager that I shot my hand up - before she finished the question! Her next question cemented the deal. Did I have any supervisory experience? I replied yes, and that is how after about two hours of training on shelters back in Denver, the Red Cross selected me to be the Shelter Manager for the staff shelter in West Palm Beach, Florida, taking care of up to 100 volunteers. My direct supervisor was Sandy, an Assistant Manager for Staff Shelters, in Miami, sixty miles away. Half an hour later I was in a van, with Darlene, Kate and Mike W., all first time volunteers like me, heading north on I-95. We were the new shelter staff. Total shelter experience: zero. Darlene was from Loveland, Colorado. Kate and Mike were from different towns in upstate New York. We knew nothing about each other. A few downed trees and occasional piles of broken branches and debris were the only indications that a hurricane had swept across the land ten days earlier. In this seemingly normal landscape, we were going to take care of approximately 100 “guests.” The Red Cross has a policy not to call the victims of disasters victims. That would victimize them further. They are to be called clients. This had been pounded into me during training. But volunteers are not clients, for us they became “guests.”
The departing staff was in a great hurry to leave. Jumbles of instructions were thrown at us: women over there, men here; toilets on that side are all for women even the one marked “men,” sign out and sign in sheets have to be faxed every day, no, there is no fax machine – use the one in the IBEW office, provide coffee and breakfast, if you need anything fill a “greenie” and give it to the courier, the shower trailers are outside – they are provided by FEMA and they clean them, call Pam when you shut the shelter down – she will take care of the showers, there is no way to clean used blankets and towels – the Red Cross says throw them away – they are piled up in the store room downstairs, return the TV to the Holiday Inn – it’s wired for cable and there is no cable, we are leaving two cars and two cell phones – they need to be assigned to you – call transportation and communications, don’t go out alone at night – no we have not had any problems but the AA people can get rowdy and cars park in the back – maybe kids, maybe drugs, lights out at 10, lights on at 6:30, there is a trash problem – it has not been picked up, have a good stay, any questions? Thirty minutes later they were gone. Luckily for us, one of them, Barbara, had agreed to stay overnight and help us adjust. We would have been up the proverbial creek without her. A “greenie” was not green but a white requisition form; she had compiled a list of useful phone numbers; the Holiday Inn was just down the street; the union secretary, Beverly, was really nice and Barbara showed us where the Union office was. We got an inkling of what we were supposed to do and then, that afternoon, she too left and we were on our own. RUNNING THE SHELTER.....
The garbage was a big smelly problem. The little two cubic yard container for the entire building had been overwhelmed. Piles of garbage clustered around it. I called Sandy in Miami asking whether I had authority to pay for more pick-ups. Her answer was that I should try to get more service for free (beg and beg, tell them you are the poor Red Cross), but as a last resort I could call her and get payment authorization. Kate got on the phone with the city garbage department. She was told that a more senior person will call her back about the free request. I walked down to the Union office and asked Beverly if they could help. She said that they would try. Later that afternoon I got a call from Sherry in Logistics. I did not know there was such a group in the Red Cross. She asks me what size container would I like. Six cubic yards would do, I reply. She says that I would have it very soon. Sandy must have talked to Logistics, wherever they might be. The next morning at 5 AM I went downstairs to unlatch the shower trailers and the garbage was all gone! The container was empty. Two days later, Logistics called me back. Could they send a 20 cubic yard container instead of the six cubic yard one? That size would make a serious dent in our parking but I agreed. I never heard from Logistics again or got a container. The senior city official never called back, but our garbage was being emptied every day. I went down to thank the union. They denied they did anything. The garbage people must be confused by the hurricane and the mess it created and maybe we have ended up on several different routes, they suggested. I suspected the union called the garbage collectors for a favor. (We also reduced the magnitude of the garbage by recycling, thanks to Kate and Mike taking the initiative and finding the county recycling facility). Instructions prior to deployment had characterized Wilma as a “hardship” assignment. We were told to bring essential items, with a list provided. I flew to Miami carrying bottled water in my backpack, toilet rolls in my suitcase and bedding to sleep on. In the shelter store room we found over two thousand rolls of toilet paper, dozens of cases of bottled water and stacks of blankets. The Red Cross was generous with us. Those “greenies” really worked – more often than not we received much more than we asked for. A request for a case of cereal turned into a pallet (1800 boxes). We kept a rough inventory of our supplies but the Red Cross never asked to see it or questioned our usage. As supplies piled up, storage space became limited. There were piles of garbage bags filled with used blankets and towels. It seemed unethical to just trash them, as we had been told to do. All they needed was to be washed. Kate got on the phone and Pastor Murphy from one of the local churches agreed to take them. He showed up in a sedan, expecting a few items. We filled a minivan. The store room also had 105 stacked cots. The shelter itself had all the cots that could be placed in it. Luckily, the local Red Cross chapter called to ask if we had any spare cots. They were needed in a client shelter. We gave away all 105 cots. Bar the occasional crisis, like when the propane for the showers ran out, the mechanics and work entailed in operating the shelter were quite easy. After a couple of days, we started to work on making the place more congenial for our guests. We housed volunteers who worked in various capacities with clients: shelter staff, case workers, medical and mental health, etc. We had yet to see a “client.” THE COCONUT PALMS RESORT Most of the volunteers staying at the shelter were first timers like us, the pool of veterans having been exhausted by the demands of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Those who stayed with us came from 35 states, generally did not know anyone else and were in West Palm Beach for the first time. Roughly two thirds were women. Ages ranged from high school students (at least 18) to well beyond social security. The faces were constantly changing as some finished their three week assignments and others were shifted into hotels. Kate drew a nice scene with swaying Palm trees and our new name. We ceased being the West Palm Beach Staff shelter and become the Coconut Palms Resort. The coconut referred to a simian skull shaped specimen that someone had left on a table. One of our guests started buying flowers for the row of tables that separated the men and women areas. We used the debit cards given to each of us by the Red Cross (loaded with $900) to buy milk, vegetables and other goodies from the local Winn Dixie supermarket. We started gradually turning the lights off at night and gradually turning them on in the morning – a great hit with guests. The Hershey kisses we left on pillows in the evening were also a hit. Shower hours were thrown out – people could take showers whenever they wanted as long as they did not go alone at odd hours. At breakfast we provided newspapers. We found entertainers among our guests and some evenings there was a show. Kat, from Baltimore, was part of the music scene back home and had brought her guitar. Jim from Alabama had a voice that made the hall vibrate. He finished with a string of Red Neck jokes, after proclaiming himself a proud Alabama Red Neck. We started a laundry service, picking up clothes in the morning and bringing them back in the evening. We took people who had no transportation to the airport; after all it was just two minutes away. Like good B&B operators we tried to banish the word “no” from our vocabulary. Mike was always willing to help guests lug their luggage up two flights of stairs. Some of them, in spite of the “hardship” warning we were given, came with the most enormous and heavy suitcases.
Evenings became a time for people to gather at the center tables and unwind. Some of what the volunteers saw and heard about the devastation to individuals and families caused by Wilma was quite overwhelming. These evenings became therapeutic sessions. Judy K. was a local volunteer and clinical psychologist assigned to our shelter. She would come in the evenings, mingle and chat with our guests. After about three days she came and told me that she did not see any need for her services, everyone seemed to be coping well. A mental health worker remained on call for the rest of the time; we never had an occasion to call. About three days after we started operating the shelter, I noticed a thick red binder lying behind a pile of paperwork. It was the official manual for shelter operations. I opened it. The first thing I saw was an organization chart: manager, assistant manager, security officer…. I put it away and never looked at it again. SAFETY AND SECURITY On the first day, in the late afternoon, two men walked in. Both were lean, walked with a certain gait and exuded authority. “Hi, I’m Joe,” said one. “I’m John,” said the other. “We are Safety and Security,” said Joe. I hadn’t heard of this branch of the Red Cross. They were both law enforcement officers, Joe from Fresno, John from Lawrence, Kansas, and they looked like they had just walked in from Dodge City. They were the internal security force. Their mission was never clearly defined to me, but my impression was they chased the scammers among the volunteers, escorted and put on a plane home those who had violated Red Cross rules and generally maintained order within the volunteer community. They would swing by every day; it was part of their job to inspect the shelter – particularly the toilets. There must have been a report prepared every day on the cleanliness of our shelter. Unlike some other Safety and Security personnel we met later, Joe and Jim were professional gentleman and sharp as whips. One morning, Joet, one of our guests told me that the cot next to him had been empty for the last two days. We faxed the shelter head count to Miami every day but did not do bed checks – everyone was an adult and we were not monitors. I called Sandy, my supervisor. She asked me if there was anything visible to identify the owner of the items on and under the cot. Under the bed was a paper folder with a name visible, Michael W., Our log sheets showed Michael had signed in a week earlier but never stayed at the shelter. I reported this to Sandy. A little later Sandy called me. The Red Cross had no information about Mr. W. (The Red Cross losing track of volunteers did not appear to be uncommon. After a week on the job Mike on our staff got a call from Miami. They had lost track of him and wanted to know where he was). Joe and John showed up and we repeated what we knew to them. However, Mr. W. must have gotten wind of the sleuths on his tail. The next day he showed up at the shelter and collected his things. He did tell me that he was staying at the Marriott and that he worked as a case worker supervisor. I reported this to Joe and John and never saw Mr. W. again, or was even sure that the man who took his belongings was him. The next week Joe and John chased Mr. W. around the hotels of Palm Beach County and finally did collar him and ship him off to Miami. He was not the only one. There were individuals who signed up as volunteers, got deployed with Red Cross funded debit cards and then flew down to Florida at Red Cross expense and had a good time. The extreme need for volunteers appeared to have overwhelmed the Red Cross selection process and background checks. We received other names that security was looking for but they never showed up at the Coconut Palms. Another evening, Joe and John escorted James to the shelter. He was being sent home for infractions I was not privy to and was going to spend the night at the shelter before catching his flight. He was a big man, but I was assured that he was not going to be violent or dangerous. James wanted to test my authority. I told him that I was not his jailer and he was free to come and go as he pleased. He placed his belongings on an empty cot and then called a cab and left. Early the next morning as I went down to open the showers, James was stretched out on the sidewalk fast asleep, He reeked of alcohol. I woke him and helped him to his feet. It was not easy, he was a big man. I asked him if he wanted to go upstairs. He said that he could not negotiate the stairs. So we sat downstairs in the smokers chairs. He was a genial man and it seemed that drinking had been his downfall. Later Joe and John came and took him to the local headquarters for out processing. Apparently no flights were available because they brought him back for another night before I drove him to the airport at 5:15 a.m. He easily won the snoring trophy that night even though the women had a tough competitor. If he had stayed, he would have won every night. You could hear him from outside the building.
A week later, Joe and John were gone and we
had a new security crew. We discovered a new function for the group –
information management. A weather disturbance had developed in the
Caribbean, named Gamma, one of whose
potential paths was identical to that of Wilma, three weeks earlier. Some of
our guests asked about it. I called Jim E. in Boulder and he gave me the
latest information off the internet. That evening security informed me that
it had been decided (by whom I had no idea) that information about Gamma
“You mean rumors are better than the truth?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied. He was serious. The next morning Mike went and got the newspapers. In mock horror he asked if we needed to destroy the front page. The two inch tall headlines screamed,” HERE WE GO AGAIN,” with a graphic showing Gamma’s projected path right over us. In the photo Kate is reading the contraband front page. Luckily for us, Gamma veered off south of Florida. VOLUNTEERING AT THE FAIRGROUNDS SHELTER The Red Cross kept moving our guests into hotel rooms, in accordance with its stated policy. There were no criteria for the kind of hotels volunteers were being sent to. Some, like the Okeechobee, Journey and Camelot were so bad that volunteers came back to us, recounting tales of cockroaches and mildew in the rooms, dirty linen and drug deals. Others were put up at the five star PGA Resort (http://www.pga-resorts.com/). Many of our guests told us that they preferred the shelter: it saved the Red Cross money and they loved the community atmosphere. It did not matter – they were told they had to move into hotels. As a consequence our population started declining and we found that by mid morning we were done with our work and it did not pick up until evening. I called Chris, my third supervisor, and got his assent for two or three of us to go to the client shelter at the South Florida Fairgrounds, a twenty minute drive away, and help out. (My supervisors kept changing, sometimes without notifying me, as they completed their deployment or rotated to other jobs). Chris agreed. This shelter was being managed by Mike and Therese H., retired firefighters from Baltimore. They had stayed in our shelter. Kate and I drove there mid morning and, after two weeks in Florida, I saw my first clients – the people we had come to help. The shelter was set up in a giant exhibition hall. The resident population fluctuated between 250 and 300. It was racially mixed: White, Hispanic and African American. There were babies and octogenarians, singles and large families. Most residents slept on mats or mattresses on the floor. There were a couple of televisions, a kids play area, a nurses station, a coffee bar and a dining area. Outside there were two enclosed areas: one set up as a play area for children, the other as a smoking area. The hall was reasonably clean and orderly. For our first task, Therese asked us to count the number of people who did not have cots. She and Mike had become Shelter managers three days earlier and she was trying to get cots for everyone. The hurricane had roared through three weeks earlier. We found that 138 slept on pads on the concrete floor and another 28 on mattresses that they had brought with them. My second task was to help in the food line at lunch. I handed out ham sandwiches with my right hand and turkey sandwiches with my left. There had been an outbreak of the Norwalk virus (the cruise ship virus that causes severe gastroenteritis) in the shelter and we were told to hand food to residents and not let them touch the food containers. There was a considerable amount of food left over. Lee, an energetic lady from New Hampshire, ran the food service. She said that Red Cross instructions were to trash the leftovers, but she had found a church shelter that could use the leftover food. She offered to take me with her. The Westgate Tabernacle church was a fifteen minute drive away in one of the poorest neighborhoods. Part of its roof had been damaged by Wilma and was covered with a blue tarp. We were met by Sylvia, a warm lady of majestic proportions and an even bigger heart, who was clearly in charge and by Jeff, an intense voluble social worker. In a space of approximately 3,500 square feet they were providing food and shelter to a population of 60-85. Some slept in the pews. The county was trying to shut them down for numerous code violations. Sylvia said that they did not turn anyone away except for alcohol or drug use and most of their residents had nowhere else to go. I had never before seen poverty like this in America. We were less than two miles from the multi-million dollar mansions of Palm Beach. In the ensuing days I made many trips to Westgate Tabernacle and we gave them all our used blankets, which kept piling up steadily as our shelter guests moved on. Later that day, Jim E., from back home in Boulder, Colorado, called me and asked how things were going. Among other things we discussed the strange juxtaposition of volunteers, on a supposedly hardship deployment, staying in fancy hotels (as a golfer he knew about the PGA Resort) on donated dollars while the clients they came to serve did not have cots. He decided he wanted to let his views known to some one in a position of authority within the Red Cross. I told him that he was free to use my name as his source of information. I talked to my supervisor about cots and hotels. I was told to stick to my assignment. The client shelter was not my responsibility. I GET INTO TROUBLE The next day I was working at the Fairgrounds shelter when I received a call from Red Cross Headquarters in Washington. Jim had been working the phones. Jim and I were tied into a three-way call with Renata H., Director of Public Relations. With Jim listening, I explained to her what was bothering us. She picked up on the lack of cots and ignored the rest. The lack of cots was unacceptable, she said. We agreed and she promised that someone from Florida would get in touch with me. That afternoon I was delivering food to Westgate Tabernacle Church when I received a call from Miami. It was Greg M., Deputy Director for the entire Hurricane Wilma effort and, I presumed, the operational head in charge of approximately 2000 volunteers. He was polite and professional. He assured me that the Red Cross was not paying retail rates for hotel rooms. The Red Cross worked on trust, he lectured me. He trusted me and I had to trust him. The Red Cross got rooms at places like the Marriott and PGA Resort either free or at minimal cost. Trust me, he said, the Red Cross was not paying anything like $200 for a hotel room anywhere. But, like Renata, he focused more on the cot situation. It seemed to surprise him. He also called it unacceptable. I pointed out that it was a management problem if he did not know that the largest shelter in West Palm Beach County did not have cots for the majority of its clients, three weeks after the hurricane. He tried to trip me up. I had talked about clients sleeping on the floor and at another point I mentioned the thin Red Cross pads they were supplied with. “You just said they were sleeping on the floor.” I replied that they were on the floor on a thin pad. He promised to get cots for the shelter and then asked if it had been appropriate for me to discuss these issues with someone outside the Red Cross (Jim E.). I told him that I thought it was perfectly appropriate. We ended cordially but I was left with the impression that his primary focus had been to manage the loose cannon (me). A couple of hours later there was a call from someone else in Miami. The cots would be there that night or the next morning. I suggested that it might help if someone from headquarters visited Red Cross sites to assess the situation on the ground (the old management by walking around routine). My suggestion was resisted. We rely on our managers, I was told. What if the managers were inexperienced, like me, I asked. The reply: we rely on our managers. The next day no cots showed up. My supervisor talked to me. I had apparently caused quite a commotion. Some had wanted to bring me back to Miami and then, I presumed, send me home. But he had persuaded them to leave me where I was on the theory that sending me home might cause worse problems. A volunteer named Nora was assigning hotel rooms locally. I had talked with her several times as she shifted volunteers out of our shelter. I called her and asked what it was costing the Red Cross to put volunteers at the PGA Resort. The conversation went like this: Nora: “Why?” Param: “I just want to know.” Nora: “Why?” Param: ”Because we are spending donated dollars and I would like to know where they are going.” Nora: “I’m not going to tell you!” Param: “Are the rooms free?” Nora: “No.” SHUT DOWN AND TRANSFERRED After two weeks, the Red Cross succeeded in placing all volunteers in hotel rooms and we were directed to shut down the shelter. However, there were some wild gyrations during those last few days. It turned out that Red Cross Housing knew how many hotel rooms they had in the area but no idea of how many volunteers were staying in the rooms. There was panic when some hotels, including the PGA resort, wanted their rooms back. Nobody knew how many would be without lodging. One evening I was told we would be at full capacity. We had been at about 20% the previous night. However, only a few more guests showed up. The next morning I was told to shut down. While we were shutting down, there was a call from Miami: Hold everything. Apparently there was another crisis. An hour later we were told to continue shutting down. We cleaned the place and stacked 120 cots. We started to prepare an inventory but were told it was not needed. I suggested to my supervisor that the cots could be used at the Fairgrounds. He agreed and passed along the suggestion to the client shelter office in Miami. For our last week of assignment we were given a choice. We could become part of the staff at the Fairgrounds shelter or be given other assignments. (I was given an additional choice – I could go home). We all chose to spend that last week working at Fairgrounds. We were assigned rooms in the Palm Beach Marriott hotel. SHIFT SUPERVISOR AT FAIRGROUNDS Thanksgiving week we started working full time for Mike and Therese. Therese informed me that I was going to be the Shift Supervisor on the 3 p.m. to midnight shift. Apparently, though I was persona non grata in Miami, word had not filtered down to the hinterlands. There were 8-12 volunteers on each shift. This was more challenging work than operating the Coconut Palms. We were not dealing with fellow volunteers but clients who had lost their homes and most of their possessions and were in the fourth week of residence. The biggest frustration for most was the lack of information about the future. We did not have information to share. Directives from the Red Cross changed every day. Prepare to shut down by this date; no, prepare to receive more clients from other shelters. FEMA and state agencies showed up sporadically but did not clarify anything. It was hard to dispute the notion that nobody seemed to be in charge. Working at Fairgrounds had its moments. The first day, reporting for our shift, we were told that there was a homeless lady in the far corner, with a dog. She had contacted a lawyer who stated that this was a working dog and had threatened the Red Cross if his client could not keep it in the shelter. She had been let in. The dog was a big hairy thing, amiable enough, but it was difficult to see what he actually did for Patty, her owner. Other clients, some with small children, were apprehensive about the dog. I told them that the owner needed it to function, that it was trained and would not harm anyone. However, the questions kept coming so we decided to make an announcement over the public address system. We explained why the dog was there and that it was a “working” dog. Soon after the announcement one of the clients came to me. He told me to watch how many people headed for the bathrooms. I must have looked confused so he explained. Most people there understood a “working” dog to be one that sniffed for drugs. Sure enough, there was a surge of people suddenly developing a need to use the toilets. There must have been a considerable spike in our water usage with all those flushing toilets. The next day we found another homeless lady with a dog in the shelter. It turned out that it was her lawyer that had contacted the Red Cross. Patty had just turned up at the right moment and been mistaken for this second lady. She must have been puzzled (and gratified) by the consideration shown to her old dog. A few days later, in the late evening, we were told to expect more clients as the shelter in Clewiston was being shut down. They came in a bus and most of them were rapidly assigned spaces. Fortunately they brought blankets, mattresses and pads with them as we only had five blankets left in our supply room. One young couple stayed near the entrance and I saw the nurse had brought a wheelchair for the woman and was conferring with them. One of our middle-aged staff, Betty, had worked at Clewiston and recognized this couple. She came up to me and told me that the young woman had also requested a wheelchair in Clewiston though her medical story kept changing and no one knew what, precisely, she was suffering from, but she loved wheeling around real fast in the wheelchair. Betty continued, giggling, as she searched for an euphemism. They were also well known for making their mattress “squeak,” and had been caught doing the “squeaky” in the shower. By this time the nurse came up to me. She told me that the woman had a medical condition and the couple had requested that they be allowed to put their air mattress along the wall near an electrical plug, a more secluded area, since it leaked and also, because of her disability, if her husband could help her take showers. I listened to the nurse and then told her to go and talk to Betty and then come back to me. In the interests of probity I did not agree to let them place their mattress near the wall (it would have blocked a fire exit anyway), and we told them that we only had one wheelchair (which was true) and someone would bring it to them whenever it was needed but they could not keep it. The showers were closed at night so I did not have to make an executive decision about that, but did debrief the supervisor of the next shift. A seven year old girl with a lovely smile and lisp followed Mike W. around the shelter. Mike told me that she had decided that when she grew up she was going to be a Red Cross volunteer just like us. When I asked what they were doing, I was informed that she had become Mike’s apprentice and they were checking if the trash containers needed emptying. The Press (TV and Print) were at the shelter fairly often. Kate got her photo in the Palm Beach Post as she helped one of our young clients with his homework. One evening, a young woman came back to the shelter accompanied by an older lady. The woman was flushed and brimming with excitement. The paper had just published an article about her being alone by herself in the shelter. One of the paper’s readers had called the paper and offered to take her into her home and also arrange a job interview. They were now there to pick up her belongings. There were more stories like this as local residents opened their hearts to our clients. During the last few days of my deployment, straddling Thanksgiving, it was clear that the Red Cross wanted to wind things down. The coffee bar had been open all the time, then its hours were restricted and eventually it was shut down entirely. We were instructed not to heat food for clients in the microwave. Our supplies started to dwindle and were not replenished. The clients were caught between the Red Cross’ desire to wind things up and the apparent inability of FEMA and other agencies to take over. One client, an old man who was there alone, said to me, “I know what you are doing. You are just going to make things so miserable for us that we just leave. But I have nowhere to go.” I had a nice thanksgiving meal in a fancy Palm Beach church (the opposite end of the spectrum from the Westgate Tabernacle). It was organized by the staff from the local Red Cross headquarters. That evening we served a thanksgiving meal to our clients. It was a nice meal but not as nice as mine. Several clients asked to use the public address system and thanked the Red Cross volunteers for their work. An old lady sang for us in Spanish. I had one more day of work left. EPILOG I left Palm Beach for home on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Before checking out I talked to the Marriott staff. It was my intention, I told them, to give to charity an amount equal to my hotel bill. I wanted to know the real cost to the Red Cross. Was the room free? They looked it up. No, it was not free. The Red Cross was going to be billed $200 per night. A quick calculation showed that, assuming hotel rooms averaged just $50 per night per volunteer, keeping 100 volunteers in our staff shelter would have saved the Red Cross $35,000 per week. Not exactly chump change. The next day, Sunday, I called Mike H. at the Fairgrounds client shelter. Things there were hectic and confused, as usual. FEMA and state agencies were there but nobody knew what was going to happen. I asked if they had received the cots promised more than a week earlier. The answer was brief: no.
COMMENTS? Send them to pinebrookpress@aol.com.
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The
shelter at 927 Belvedere Boulevard was a large, air-conditioned second floor
function/dance hall owned by the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers (IBEW) local 728. Downstairs was a Bail Bondsman and the meeting
hall of the local AA. Across the street was a small strip mall with bars on
all windows. It was in the shadow of I-95 and a stone’s throw from the Palm
Beach airport.
On
our team, Darlene (on the right here), lived with her husband in the
foothills just west of Loveland. She was the secretary/treasurer of her
local fire board. She wanted the kitchen and night duty (for most of the
duration we were available to our guests 24/7). Her husband worked the night
shift and she was used to staying up. She was on night duty for a week until
her feet swelled up from sitting all night and we started rotating that
assignment. The rest of us shared the other chores. Kate (in the middle of
photo) was a recent graduate of Penn State, played professional softball in
Italy and was on the Italian national team. She was the youngest, dependable
with leadership abilities. Mike (on the left) was an engineer. True to type
he carried a Leatherman tool and became our fixer, doing everything
enthusiastically and with a smile.
Trophies
won by union teams over the years were stacked up in a small side room. We
took the tallest one, about three feet high, won in some long ago softball
tournament, and it made it our “Snoring” trophy. Every night it would be
shifted to the side of the room, men or women, where the loudest snorer
resided. Lest you think otherwise, the women more than held their own. This
became our signature event. Later, during our deployment, we met volunteers
who had never stayed with us but had heard about the “Snoring Trophy.”
That's me in the photo handing the trophy to Joet. He really did not win it
but wanted a photo with it (as did several other guests).
was
to be withheld because it might cause panic among some volunteers.