[Rhodes22-list] Katrina, and What We Felt

[Chris Geankoplis]

Herb,
        Thank you, your eloquent friend has restored my faith in the little
guy and average Joe.  And in the workers on the front line who help so
selflessly.
Chris Geankoplis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Herb Parsons" <hparsons at parsonsys.com>
To: <columbia at list.sailjazz.com>; <gulfcoast at list.sailjazz.com>;
<oday at list.sailjazz.com>; <columbia at list.sailnet.net>;
<coronado at list.sailnet.net>; <gulfcoast at list.sailnet.net>;
<oday at list.sailnet.net>; <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>;
<odayowners at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 6:59 PM
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] Katrina, and What We Felt


> First of all, I apologize for the multiple postings some of you will
> see, but I've gotten requests or emails from virtually all of the email
> lists I'm on, asking about my boat on Lake Pontchartrain. I'm going to
> have some stuff on my web site as soon as I get physically and
> emotionally rested, and can squeeze in some time catching up with work.
> However, in the meantime, I got this from my old college roommate who
> went with me on the trip. He wrote 3 documents, "What we did", "What I
> saw", and "What I felt". I thought the last one so beautifully expressed
> things I'd share it.
>
> First, to bring any of you up to date that don't know, but are
> interested, I recently got my USCG captain's license (25 ton master's)
> and started the training process to work part time for Grapevine
> Excursions. Grapevine Excursions is beginning operation of a
> sight-seeing tour service using WWII vintage amphibious vehicles called
> DUKWs. They sent one of the vehicles to New Orleans to assist in the
> rescue operations there, and allowed me to go as the operator of the
> vessel. I mentioned the trip to my old college roommate, Brad Mercer,
> and he asked if he could come too.
>
> A lot has been said recently, mostly by people that weren't there,
> about what was and wasn't done in New Orleans and the gulf state area,
> and what should have been done, and who was at fault, etc. etc.. I think
> Brad has captured a true essence of what those that were there saw and
> felt.
>
> This is what he wrote of his feelings on the trip:
>
> =====
>
> Katrina, Part III, What I Felt
>
> I have seen in this past week more literally overwhelming destruction
> * and more humbling nobility of spirit * than ever before in my
> life.  I have felt more encouraged and affirmed than I can remember
> being in a long time.  By the end of the week it felt like a badge of
> honor, a mark of distinction, to be able to call myself a human.
>
> It began at the Coast Guard operation in Alexandria, Louisiana.  The
> person in charge there, in certainly the biggest assignment of his life,
> and one for which he couldn't possibly be adequately prepared, had
> been working 20 hours a day for a week, and we civilians had shown up
> uninvited, offering to help with our amphibious vehicle (called a DUKW,
> pronounced "duck").  Yet he was as courteous and gracious as he
> could be.  He showed us around the facility, introduced us to someone
> who could figure out how to plug us in, and bragged on his people, who
> had also been working 20 hour shifts, and who were also gracious and
> attentive and helpful.  He told us about a girl in the Coast Guard in
> New Orleans who had just the previous week obtained whatever licensing
> or credentials are required to do aerial rescues from a helicopter.  He
> said a typical Coast Guard helicopter pilot may do 20 aerial rescues in
> a career, and this girl had done 70 in her first week after qualifying.
> So before we got close enough to see the first sign of wind or flood
> damage, my heart began to swell with admiration for all of the rescue
> and relief workers.
>
> The sun was rising on Saturday morning as we entered the city of New
> Orleans, a major port and renowned tourist attraction, a city of a
> half-million people, the home of the Superdome and the New Orleans
> Saints NFL football team and the French Quarter and Mardi Gras * the
> city where the party never stops.  The sky was blue, the sun was
> shining, the temperature was perfect, the roads were clear.
>
> And the great city was empty, abandoned, desolate.  We passed mile
> after mile of highways, homes, shopping centers, hotels, offices,
> churches and franchised fast-food places without people or traffic.  I
> have seen a great city skyline standing black against a black sky.
> There was nobody.  That was the single eeriest experience of my life.
> It was like being in some sort of post-apocalyptic movie.  I felt the
> emptiness, the abandonment, the smallness and the weakness and the
> transience of the greatest human achievements.  I felt what hell would
> be like for me * alone in a world that was built for relationships.
>
> As we roamed the desolate city, I felt the perspective of the looter.
> No one else was around.  No one seemed to own anything or be in charge
> of anything or responsible for anything or able to provide anything or
> to care about anything at that location.  It was like being the only
> person left alive after a world-ending nuclear war.  The whole material
> remnant of the "developed" world is now just your unexplored urban
> jungle for hunting and gathering, which is what you are reduced to in a
> place that is, for the moment at least, too primitive even for
> agriculture, much less manufacturing.  I could see the signs on the
> small shops that said things like "We shoot looters" and identify
> with the person determined to protect at any cost what was left of his
> property, but for the first time in my life, I could at least imagine
> what the world looked like to the looter, too.
>
> One of the most remarkable emotional experiences was just the spirit of
> the workers.  We must have seen agencies from 20 states represented.  We
> saw every possible law enforcement and military agency from every
> possible level of government, as well as countless private organizations
> like us.  It could have been a bureaucratic nightmare, but every leader
> we encountered, no matter how harried and overworked, was kind and
> willing to help and be helped.  Every one of them offered to share their
> food and drink (but not their gasoline), and looked for ways to keep
> structure and coordination intact while still incorporating unexpected
> offers of help.  Every one of them was working as hard as they could to
> make it work and get the job done.  One Louisiana Parks & Wildlife
> leader snapped dismissively at us when we pulled up and tried to ask a
> question, but I spoke to him affirmingly and encouragingly and
> sympathetically for no more than two minutes before he was nearly in
> tears, talking about the challenges that he faced, offering us food and
> drink and a place to park our duck.  That was probably the first moment
> in our adventure when I actually felt useful and valuable.  I couldn't
> captain the boat and I wasn't a mechanic, but I could reflect to
> people their own value in a way that made it possible for them to work
> with us.
>
> We found people at the Crossroads Church of the Nazarene like all the
> other workers.  Their brand new building had sustained damage, but the
> pastor and a group of Red Cross volunteers formed a bucket brigade-style
> line and helped us unload 217 cases of Similac like it was a party.
>
> I came close to feeling something less than admiration for the actual
> people we were trying to help, which is never a good thing.  People who
> don't want to leave stinking, flooded homes in an abandoned
> neighborhood without utilities are not apparently normal people.  Most
> of them seemed to be kind of marginal in some way.  They were physically
> sick and weak and frail, or they were a little mentally deficient, or
> they were just emotionally unstable.  They seemed to be totally out of
> touch with reality.  We tended to be in a hurry, trying to reach as many
> people as possible before sundown.  The National Guardsmen and
> professional Search and Rescue people who directed us were allowing one
> bag per person and no pets.  I'll never forget the little old lady who
> came to the boat, and then remembered that she had forgotten her Bible,
> so we waited for her to go back into her house for her Bible and come
> back to the boat.
>
> When we picked up one group of 25, they were actively engaged in their
> situation.  They didn't seem disconnected at all.  When Herb asked for
> a head count, one man immediately jumped up and counted for us.  Another
> told him some of what he needed to know about what was under water, that
> we were going through or over.  Another wrote our names down on a pad
> for the book she hopes to write someday, and to pray for us.  They
> helped each other sort out their bags when they left the boat for the
> big helicopters.  One chatted with me about where I was from, and about
> relatives he has in this area.
>
> They were people, like me.  For all their differences of accent, skin
> color and lifestyle, we were linked by an extraordinary circumstance,
> and I felt what it means to talk about our "fellow men".  We were
> part of the same extended family, and when push came to shove, we would
> help each other.  In the commonest of people is the spark of the divine.
>  In people for whom it would be easy in other circumstances to feel
> contempt or incomprehension there is something admirable and likable and
> akin to our own family and heroes.
>
> I had one emotional experience that I can't imagine anyone could ever
> understand who hasn't been there.  We had only experienced the
> emptiness and desolation of the evacuated New Orleans for two days.  For
> only two days had we had to drive 70 miles to Baton Rouge each day for
> gasoline and a restaurant and a place to sleep.  But when a Domino's
> Pizza place opened up on Monday morning, it was like seeing a loved
> one's eyes flutter and open when you had thought they were dead.
> It was shocking and exciting.  The only drinks they had were two-liter
> bottles, and they only had four available toppings: pepperoni,
> pineapple, jalepeno and olives, so I ordered a two-liter coke and a
> large thin crust pepperoni, pineapple, jalepeno and olive pizza, and it
> was very heaven.  It wasn't so much the food that was wonderful, as
> just the ability to order something, and hear the cash register and
> sense hope for a returning normality.  And then a man walked in and
> announced to the crowd of customers and employees that a service station
> down the road at such and such a location actually had gasoline for
> sale!  This crowd of normal, simple people were a victorious community
> in that moment.  Domino's Pizza, which was never anything special to
> me until then, will henceforth always represent to me the indomitable
> human spirit, and the determination to rebuild what is destroyed, and to
> revive what is mortally wounded, and to regain normality that
> catastrophe has stolen.  Civilization is not normal.  It is a phenomenal
> pinnacle to which humanity claws its way by superhuman effort, and which
> it maintains at heroic cost.  With the help of my own overactive
> imagination, in a mere two days, I caught a glimpse of that truth.
>
> The most impacting emotion of the whole week, though was an odd mixture
> of humility and pride.  I don't have any military or governmental
> affiliation that makes me "official".  I don't have any practical
> trade skills that makes me "essential".  I was just tagging along at
> the last moment, doing whatever I could, lowering and raising a ladder,
> handing out or loading and unloading boxes of water or formula, rolling
> a flat tire out of the way.  I can't imagine anyone who had the
> opportunity that presented itself to me, choosing differently than I
> chose.  But for a week, I was treated like a hero.
>
> Driving down the road with a load of baby formula, we were passed on
> the left by a white pickup truck from the maintenance department of some
> local school district, and the driver gave us a thumbs up sign as he
> passed us.  A few minutes later a woman in a sedan passed us on the
> right, made eye contact with us, and mouthed the words "thank you."
> We would stop for gas or a meal in Baton Rouge and someone would hear us
> talking to each other, or see something on our truck that suggested what
> we were doing, and * male and female, young and old * they would
> come up to us, and their eyes would water and their bottom lip would
> quiver, and they would say with a thick, choked voice "thank you for
> everything you're doing.  This is our home.  You are our heroes."
> And we would get to say: "You're welcome.  You're worth it.
> Everyone's just doing what they can."
>
> We were looking for a way to reduce the number of trips we would need
> to make to Baton Rouge to get gas, so we asked a customer at a gas pump
> who had 3 5-gallon gas cans tied on top of her car, where she got them
> or if she knew where we could get some.  She said we'd probably have
> to go all the way to Lafayette, another hour and a half past Baton
> Rouge.  A couple of minutes later she came back to us and asked us where
> we were heading.  We said we were doing relief work in New Orleans.  She
> said: "My home was destroyed, and you're going there to help.  You
> take my gas cans.  And thank you."  Of course, she refused payment for
> them.
>
> I have never lived before in a culture of such sincere mutual
> admiration and gratitude.  Surely that's what the church is supposed
> to be like, and what heaven will be like.  People who were providing us
> with food and shelter and a shower were thanking us as we were thanking
> them.  The National Guardsman who guided us on the boat, who made it
> possible for us to do anything useful at all, thank us as we thanked
> him, for making it possible.  And every night that we went back to the
> Baton Rouge church, we'd find a mint or a piece of candy on "our"
> bed, with a thank you note * sometimes a printed one from an adult,
> but usually one written in crayon by a child from a local Christian
> school.  The one I saved and brought home with me is written in red
> crayon.  In a childish scrawl it says:
>
> "Thank you.  Thank you so much for coming down here you are so brave.
>  You are risking everything for us and I want to thank you.  You will be
> in my prayes.  You will always be blessed by God.  I hope you get enough
> food and rest.  Sense you have treated us so well here is a treat for
> you.
>
> Ryan
> Victory Academy" * and at the bottom it had a cherry-flavored Jolly
> Rancher candy taped to the note.
>
> I came away from this week feeling grateful for a God who is bigger
> than the big storm, and grateful that he has made us in his own image,
> and allowed me the companionship of creatures who are only a little
> lower than the angels.
>
> Brad Mercer
> September 10, 2005
>
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