JeffAndJanice.com

Monday, September 15, 2008

How I spent my weekend:

As a condition of my employment with the Department of Social Services, I am bound to serve in the capacity of disaster relief worker after hurricanes. In the past, I've worked to distribute food stamps, and man relief stations. But none of these episodes has been as pointless as this weekend.

I'll start with the pre-weekend. On Thursday, as the storm approached, my office was closed at 2 p.m. Coastal parishes were about to face mandatory evacuations, so this was not unexpected.

Friday, as the storm grew closer, the office remained closed. But at 9:00 a.m., my District Manager called me at home to inform me that people who work in closed offices had suddenly been ordered to report to open offices further inland. I suppose people belly-ached about having to work while we had the day off.

I laughed. It's the kind of pointless thing we expect from my agency. We were expected to go to an office where we had no desks, or computers, or clients. Not only would we get no work done, but our presence would cause a disruption that would prevent the local workers from getting anything done.

As I said, I laughed. Then I looked at the clock, and told my Manager that I get off work at 11:00 on Fridays. She agreed it would be pointless to arrive there in time to turn around and go home, so I was off the hook.

Later, I was told that the other workers arrived in Lafayette just before lunch time. With no work to do, they went to lunch. While they were away, State Office ordered the inland parishes to be closed, so the workers returned to find the doors locked. They had driven to another parish on a day off, just to have lunch and go home. But it gets better.

Saturday the storm was blowing, even in my area, which was pretty far from Galveston. My pager went off, and I called the unfamiliar number and was informed that I had been called up for hurricane duty in Lake Charles. I was to report to a staging area in Lafayette, and would be transported west for duty from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. I told them I'd be there as instructed. This was ample notice, and I was glad that it gave me the opportunity to get some sleep during the day, so I could make it through the night. But about an hour later, the phone rang again, and I was told that it had been canceled due to weather (!!!). OK. I've got my Saturday back. So I loaded an audio book on my new MP3 player, and spent my rainy day learning and scrubbing baseboards.

As I was on hands and knee that afternoon, scrubbing away in the bathroom, the phone rang again. I was told that the mission was back on, and I was to drop everything and report to Lafayette right away!

Damn. Now I was screwed! I never did get any sleep, and I was going to have a hard time working all night. Oh snap!

So I brushed my teeth and packed a few bottles of water and drove to Lafayette. The staging site looked just like what you'd expect. There were dozens of ambulances and Army personnel with assault rifles and Hummers. Inside, there was coffee and cots. Our Regional manager was there with his pony tail and laptop. Agency employees were sitting around, looking like they'd misplaced their decks of cards. Some of them had worked all day but others had been there since before dawn, waiting to be assigned to a task. One of my co-workers, Lynel, had also been summoned, but he had evacuated to Baton Rouge, so he had to drive a couple of hours (after selling off his ticket to a football game) to get there. We no sooner arrived, when they told us that maybe the weather wasn't so great, and we'd probably be sent home. Lynel took it with grace, as he has been sending his résumé around anyway.

We were told to return at 4:00 a.m. So I went home and set my alarm clock for 3:00.

We finally made it to Lake Charles at 5:30. Our driver, Mike, had a Google map, and instructions for the task we'd be doing. He didn't, however, have any contact information for the Lake Charles coordinators. We went to the exact location on the map, which looked like a nursing home, or something like that. There were people there, not looking very busy. They were about to serve breakfast to their residents, and were surprised to hear that their quiet facility was part of the relief effort. In fact. It wasn't.

Mike called his District Manager, and she promised a return call right away (it was at least five hours before we heard from her again). She told mike that we needed to meet a man named Dick Gremillion. We had a name, but no cell phone number, so there we were, five guys in a van, driving around an old Air Force base in the dark, looking for Dick.

After tracing the same route a few times, and finding no organized relief effort, we decided to look for a place to have breakfast. Lake Charles was a ghost town. There seemed to be electricity everywhere, but everything was closed. Even places that you can count on to be open at all hours. Finally, I suggested we go to the nearest hospital. Sure enough, It was open and the cafeteria had food. They didn't charge us for the few cold morsels they offered. They were just barely open.

We returned to the staging area to find that they had finally set up. There were dozens of ambulances, buses, porta lets, soldiers, and rifles. They had everything... except evacuees. That's right. This massive effort was assembled, and no one came. The other Social Service guys who were already there showed us the sign-in list from the day before. About ten people had come, and been bused off to wherever, but it had been very slow.

This all took place outdoors. And of course, it had to rain. So all five of us sat in the van, in the rain, waiting for evacuees who would never come. I had my MP3 player, and spent a few hours listening to Barack Obama's "Audacity of Hope" and some Italian language lessons. I shared my New Scientist magazines with the guys, but they quickly lost interest and dozed off.

With nothing to do, Mike called our administrators, and asked how long we'd have to stay. We were hoping they'd see what a waste of manpower it was to have five people sleep in a van on a tarmac all day, but they didn't see it that way. Our instructions: we were told that we should be the last to leave. They were not going to have it said that the Department of Social Services people left before anybody else.

This is the kind of logic I deal with daily in my job. After Hurricane Rita, we maintained a staff presence in the local relief center, every single day, all day for weeks, like an eternal flame, though we had no duties at all. I wish I'd had my MP3 player back then.

Well, you can imagine my first thought after hearing these instructions. What if some other agency had been given the same edict? What if we ended up sitting on the tarmac, in the rain, looking across the acres of concrete at another van full of people who refused to leave as long as we were there, while we refused to leave until they did? It could have been an ugly standoff!

Fortunately, at noon, all of the remaining ambulances and buses fired up their engines and left all at once, like they'd been watching their clocks all day long... which they had.

What a relief. I made it back home exactly 12 hours after my alarm clock sounded. I feel privileged to have done my part.

another hasty insight by Jeff on 9/15/2008

Monday, September 15, 2008

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