With the horrible disaster of Hurricane Harvey devastating parts of Texas with heavy rains and storm surges, comes the usual flood of people wanting to help but scarcely knowing what to do. Also with it comes a spate of television commercials of organizations asking for financial donations to help their responses to the human suffering at the disaster sites. Two of the biggest such organizations are the American Red Cross (ARC) and The Salvation Army (TSA).
Both organizations, made up of some leadership and many, many volunteers, are known as "first responders", although not in the sense that they show up to dig through piles of rubble or float boats to rescue victims of a disaster. Instead, they provide support for the rescuers and the rescued by providing food, hydration, supplies, shelter, and after-care for those affected, whether from a local building fire or a tragedy the size of Texas (pun intended). As such, they rely heavily on the financial support of the masses who are high-and-dry and (hopefully) grateful enough for their safe status to be willing to chip in to assist those who aren't.
I have a little bit of experience in the disaster arena to know how these organizations work. Let me share some of that with you.
First, a little history.
Back in 1997, I caught the radio bug and became an amateur radio operator, also know as a "ham" operator. It changed my life. Suddenly, I was introduced to a whole new eclectic group of people--mostly men--who took me into the radio "brotherhood" and would come to my rescue whenever things went wrong, from my daughter's locking her keys in my car while visiting at her boyfriend's house in Indy, to replacing a failed water heater. I had inadvertently become the sweetheart of the local radio club that ran a respected repeater in our county. It seemed that I was always listening and would always respond when appropriate.
One day, I overhead a radio conversation between one of my local friends and someone I hadn't heard before as he traveled to the Indy area on business. The next day, I overheard the same fellow calling for my friend on his way back out of town to his home in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Since my friend didn't answer, I did. Just to be social, I talked to the gentleman until he drove out of range of our repeater--maybe 40 or 50 miles. Two days later, I received a packet of information in the mail, with an application form to join a radio organization known as SATERN--the Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network. It seems that the fellow I had talked to was the National Director of SATERN, and was also the Director of the Salvation Army's Emergency Disaster Services for the entire metro-Chicago division! His call sign was WW9E, and his name was Pat. Major Pat, by rank.
After weeks--maybe months--of phone calls, Major Pat and I became friends. He liked my enthusiasm for radio and what he called my "can-do" attitude. He worked on me to become the SATERN Coordinator for the Indiana Division. I eventually said yes, not because I wanted to but because he was so persuasive! I also became friends with his wife (also a TSA officer/minister) and the rest of his family. He included me in many disaster training exercises. I spent a lot of time driving to the Chicago area and back in those days. He even included me in some exclusive (and expensive) Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) training. It was through all of this that I learned that both the ARC and TSA had their own radio support groups. It would be part of my job to work with the ARC in any disaster situations that involved both groups.
There was, in my local radio repeater club, a fellow (I'll call him "Doc") who seemed to have his finger in every radio pie in two counties, and made sure everyone knew it. He was a bit quirky and not at all the kind of person that people accepted as being a good spokesman for any organization or amateur radio, for that matter. He did, however, apply to become a SATERN member when I was recruiting. He was well known to be heavy into ARC dealings. Eventually, he was appointed to do the same things for the ARC radio group that I was doing for SATERN in Indiana. I thought it a bit of a conflict of interest for him to be on my SATERN team during a disaster situation when he would be expected to be functioning with the ARC group, so I excused him from membership by email, wishing him all the best and telling him that I looked forward to working with him in our disaster capacities. Oh, my! You'd think I had put him in stocks in the town square for public ridicule! He whined to the local radio club's president that I had kicked him out of SATERN, which resulted in a four-hour one-on-one meeting with him during which he lied his socks off with rambling banter and self-aggrandizement. The following morning, I joined some other repeater club friends for breakfast and told them that I never again would meet with Doc without an escort to witness his insanity. I never restored Doc to the rolls of SATERN, but I did let him volunteer when I didn't think he could do too much harm.
Just as I learned how TSA operates and handles disaster situations from Major Pat, I also came to see how the ARC operates through Doc. It wasn't pretty! One event that made me absolutely furious occurred at Amateur Radio Field Day one June years ago. Field Day is a 24-hour disaster preparedness event during which radio groups or clubs throw up antennas and start making as many contacts as they can during the hours of operation. Major Pat had been suggesting that I enlist EDS in Indianapolis to send a canteen (a mobile feeding unit) as support for Field Day. With a little finagling, I was able to get a commitment for just that.
The little gal in charge if TSA's emergency disaster services in those days didn't know the area very well but arrived just a few minutes before I did at the Field Day site. She pulled into the parking lot of the site, slightly downhill from where the radio operators would actually be. The first person she ran into was Doc, who told her that the parking lot was just the perfect spot for the canteen. (He told me that he told her it would be okay for her to park there until I showed up to tell her where to park.) Up at the operating site, he had parked a Red Cross ERV--similar to a canteen but without kitchen facilities. (It was more like a storage truck.) It was immediately apparent to me that he didn't want the canteen up where the ERV would be, for publicity reasons. He had also plastered signs and banners all over the canteen, calling the event the Red Cross Field Day (it isn't) and listing all of the local business sponsors of the ARC. That's like putting a Donald Trump sign in the window of a Planned Parenthood building. Blasphemy! The gal that drove the canteen was new to Field Day and amateur radio business, so she didn't know any better. I soon got that straightened out. Had her move the canteen up to the operating site and got the signs off. A bit later, I noticed that the ERV had been re-parked, nose-to-nose, with the canteen, again for publicity. It would have been impossible for the reporters who came from the local media to take a picture of one without taking in the other. What enraged me the most about the whole deal was how many times Doc lied to me (and to the canteen driver), and the fact that the ERV wasn't functional but shared some of the spotlight with the canteen, which provided us with generator power for our radios, ice, cold drinks, and luscious strawberry shortcake at the end of the first day of Field Day--and took the TSA gal away from her station for the whole day. Grrrr....!!
One would think that was just a solitary event, not indicative of how the ARC works. I wish that were the case. During my days as SATERN Coordinator, I would run a SATERN booth at various hamfests in Indiana in order to introduce people to SATERN as well as recruit members. More than once, I had military veterans come up to me and thank me, as a representative of TSA, with tears in their eyes, for the times that they were far from home but given free cups of coffee, donuts, and other things for free, while the ARC would charge them.
Back in 2002, a tornado hit in Martinsville, IN, just south of Indianapolis, and was on the ground for 119 miles before it dissipated. TSA was going to station canteens in the Martinsville neighborhoods for the cleanup. Since I had been on the road to Chicago when this all transpired, I needed to turn around and head back to the Indy area to get a team of radio operators together to be communicators for the canteens and TSA leadership. (Thankfully, the authorities in Martinsville shut down the town at dark each day, to prevent looting and injuries, so I only had to find operators for the daylight hours.) Martinsville is in a geographic hole. Cell phone signals didn't do well there at that time. I needed a radio operator at Incident Command on the south side of Indy, an operator at the top of the hill at the outskirts of Mville (a church on the hill allowed us to set up in their parking lot), and a couple of operators to stay with the canteens, etc. Fortunately, we got that covered.
The first thing that happened was that TSA managed to get a room in a business building for the Incident Command Center, at which point the ARC came in to share the space and all but nosed them out. They slapped up all kinds of signs, "This way to Red Cross", etc...and usurped the tables, etc., that should have been shared.
The first full day of tornado clean-up, Doc showed up where my net control operator was set up in the church parking lot. Just across the road, the ARC had parked a trailer that came all the way up from Kentucky to use as their radio control center. Doc told me that we were welcome to come and use the restrooms in the trailer, etc. He wanted to show it off to me, so I did go and poke my nose in. Impressive, I thought! There were no personnel in it, but it sure looked nice. However, when I went over there to use the restroom, as invited, the place was locked up tight with no one around. I never did see anyone there, and the very next day, the trailer was gone, as was the ARC. TSA and SATERN stayed in Martinsville for nine days. I went to school every day to teach, then headed straight to Martinsville to see how things were going. We were a well-oiled machine! I was so proud of my people!
Time after time, I have seen people come up to Salvation Army canteens with money in their hands to buy a bag of chips or a banana or a cup of coffee or tea. They are turned down. TSA will not accept donations at their points of service. Donations can be made through the organization by phone or online, but unless it is Red Kettle season, you won't see them take a nickel for anything they do. But, of course, since TSA is a church--a faith-based organization--they don't get the kind of press that the ARC does. They usually lag behind the ARC in donations because TSA doesn't make big publicity splashes. TSA is one of the most effective charities around because a very high percentage of what they take in goes directly to the goods and services provided during disasters. Can't remember the exact figure. It's something like 93%. I'll have to look that up.
There is something else that I consider a bit shady about the ARC. Their head honcho has a salary of more than a million dollars a year. The top dude of TSA gets a salary of maybe $20,000 a year, plus perks. (Officers have to pay tax on the perks as income.) It seems that the Red Cross can never quite say exactly where all of the donated money is going. Their excuse for not distributing everything they take in for a particular disaster is that they will need money for the NEXT disaster. But people aren't donating now for the next disaster. They want to help with THIS one. Something seems a bit dishonest about that.
I'm not saying that the American Red Cross doesn't do good work. I just think their methods are a bit off. They come roaring in to a disaster site, make a big splash by tacking up signs everywhere, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV time for donation solicitation, then get quiet about how much is spent where and on whom. They are gone almost as fast as they show up. Most disasters the size of Harvey in Texas is long-term. The assistance victims get needs to occur over months--maybe years--not just in the first few days. The Salvation Army, however, comes in quietly, assesses needs, and stays as long as necessary to get the job done without fanfare. An added bonus is that the TSA officers (who are ordained ministers) will even pray with you, or for you, just for emotional support and comfort. They don't ask for a thing in return. They are just present to do God's work.
And do you think I am the least bit biased? You bet I am!!
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