In 2005, a devastating hurricane hit the gulf coast of the United States. Life as we knew it stood still as those of us unaffected by the devastation watched it on TV. A levee in New Orleans breached, and the ocean came in, flooding many neighborhoods. Houses flooded, causing people trapped by the rising waters to go up higher and higher in their homes just so they wouldn't drown. MANY didn't make it, and the TV coverage was horrific. Helicopters, boats, people wading on foot through the floodwaters--all in an effort to save people up to their necks in putrid water.
Poor New Orleans didn't know where to put the refugees, so they were sent to the Superdome however they could get there. Power was out. There was no air conditioning. It was hot and humid. Water/food was scarce. People came with only the clothes on their backs. There were no beds....only hundreds of people trying to survive, and within just a couple of days, things got ugly.
At the time, I was the Indiana Coordinator for an international radio network known as SATERN. (Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network). I was friends with the National Director of SATERN and was on board to do whatever I could to help the rescue/recovery efforts. Because The Salvation Army and SATERN had people on the ground and on the airwaves to help connect people worried about their loved ones, and because I took over as Net Control a couple of times, my name and contact information was published as a header, with others, on the top of the front page on The Indianapolis Star. Shortly thereafter, I had two local TV stations in my radio shack taking pictures and asking questions. I was also getting phone calls from people frantic to know how loved ones in New Orleans were doing, since they hadn't been able to contact them.
One such phone call came from a man named Kelly, representative of the Indianapolis Colts. The Colt's star quarterback, Peyton Manning, had property in New Orleans. Mr. Kelly emphasized that Mr. Manning had not asked about the property, but he (Kelly) was hoping to surprise him (Manning) with news that his property was high and dry, if it was. He asked if I could help. I sat on that for a number of hours. I was the Net Control at the time. I could have put the inquiry out on the network to see if any operator in the N.O. area could advise, but because amateur radio is a public outlet for anyone who can access the radio frequencies, I was fully aware that this might not be something that we needed to broadcast. People were dying. It would appear to be pandering to celebrity to ask anyone in the affected area if someone's personal property was safe. Then, too, I felt that my own judgment would be criticized for even thinking that the inquiry was worthy. Thus, I called Mr. Kelly back and told him that I wouldn't put his inquiry on the air, even though I wanted to, because it wouldn't make either Mr. Manning or me look good. He agreed. Whew! Dodged a bullet there!
A few days later, after many reports of lawlessness in N.O. and contamination by the flood waters that people had been in, Katrina "refugees" were being put on planes and shipped out to cities around the country that would take them. I didn't know it at the time, but most of them had no clue where they were being sent. Indianapolis accepted a plane load, and The Salvation Army Eagle Creek Corps (church) was assigned to receive and shelter them. They were being flown in to a closed international terminal to be processed. SATERN was asked to provide communications. I had someone stationed at the corps, someone on the bus that would take them to the corps from the airport, and at the airport (me). It was a big deal!
The first thing I did was ask permission of a repeater association in Indy to use their repeater for our radio traffic. Permission granted. I wasn't asking for all traffic to be shut down for regulars on the repeater--just that they yield to priority communications when they happened. They did. What I realized only later was that the whole local radio world was listening to us!
The Disaster Director for TSA (The Salvation Army) had tried to think of everything. The first thing he asked of me was to confirm how many children were on the plane. I could confirm that there were none. No children. God bless him, he had ice cream planned for them!, if there were. Not everything was under his control, however, and I was somewhat horrified by the things that weren't.
*The refugees--99% African American-- sat on the plane quite awhile after their arrival before people in hazmat suits went in to the plane to bring them out, a couple at a time, as if they were aliens from another planet. They came with nothing but the clothes on their backs, having been in those same clothes for days.
*After deplaning, the folks were taken directly to a decontamination tent on the tarmac. They were hosed down and put in hazmat suits and allowed to go into the terminal building.
*Inside the terminal, they were triaged by health officials. Some were sent directly to the hospital. The rest were destined for the TSA shelter but had to wait for the bus to take them all at once.
*Inside the terminal were tables and tables of t-shirts, comfy sweatpants, shoes--all coming from TSA Thrift Stores. There were also tables of snacks: apples, bananas, oranges, and chips...and, of course water bottles everywhere.
*Everyone was grateful to be out of the mess in N. O....except one. She was an attractive 20-something woman who got on the evacuation plane thinking she was headed for Texas where she had family. When she found out she was in Indianapolis, she got unruly and frantic, saying she would WALK to Texas if she had to. At issue was the fact that she was deaf. She could read lips some but not enough to understand her own circumstances. It took TSA an hour or two to find an interpreter to come to help out, but they did. The last I heard, this young woman was referred to a college for the deaf in DC to help her become a lawyer.
*When it finally came time to load the bus to go to the TSA shelter, I followed. There was a police officer on site, just to keep things safe. As he, next to me, watched the folks get off the bus, he said, "I see no trouble-makers here." Nope. Just old folks needing a place to be. There were so many rumors of lawlessness in N.O. that everyone expected the worst. I have no idea how most of those dear people managed over the weeks and months after their "rescue" from the Astrodome so many years ago. I only know that, inside that shelter, they had a safe place to sleep, food, and nurses to look after them.
Know what? No matter what efforts I gave to that endeavor, **I** was the one who received the blessing. I worked to help people whose homes had been flooded and had nowhere to go. I could assist, but then I could go home to my safe little house-on-a-slab. It changed me forever.
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