Disaster Function: Site Manager, Red Cross Client Service Center, Gulfport, MS. Dates of Service: 9/10 – 10/6

Like thousands of other Americans watching Katrina unfold, I called the American Red Cross and asked how I could help. Given the magnitude of the disaster, I never expected a smooth response from any agency, government, or nonprofit. However, my experience demonstrated major systemic problems that must be addressed and fixed publicly.

Waste

After two short, early-September trainings, I was instructed to call a private travel agency contracted by the American Red Cross. I expected the organization, chartered by Congress to respond to major disasters, to transport hundreds of thousands of volunteers at cost or a low negotiated fare. My last-minute USAIR ticket cost the American Red Cross over $600. Multiply that by the thousands of disaster relief volunteers flying into the Gulf region on the American Red Cross tab. Red Cross chapter leaders suggested that there was an organizational interest in avoiding the potential liability associated with an accident involving a chartered flight full of their volunteers. Professional sports teams with players worth hundreds of millions of dollars use charter flights, as do corporate executives, and the candidates running for president.

While minimizing liability in the skies, the American Red Cross took an unthinkable number of risks on the ground. The execution of Emergency Support Function-Six of the National Response Plan was almost entirely volunteer labor. Some volunteers worked previous disasters but for many, this was their first.

No Automation, Effective Record Keeping, or Efficiency

As a first-time volunteer and site manager, I was responsible for as many as 20,000 blank American Red Cross bank checks between 9/11 and 10/6 and managing an all-volunteer staff that included many first-time “case workers” who determined eligibility for financial assistance. I coordinated the site’s logistics with local police, National Guard, local and county government, and the Gulfport NAACP, our local host organization. I also assigned volunteers the daily task of handwriting and signing as many as one thousand checks per day.

My Client Service Center provided “services” to as many as 20,000 households that waited hours or even days to pass through our doors. Individuals received $360-per-person (half my plane ticket) while households received a maximum of $1565 for five or more individuals.

Record keeping was critical and I was unsuccessful with my repeated requests for computers. I asked both my immediate superiors and the few American Red Cross DC-based paid staff at the Mississippi Gulf Coast Red Cross Headquarters. I was willing to drive to a computer store a few hours north and purchase them if need be. We had electricity and backup power generators. With corporations and individuals across the nation sending the American Red Cross record-breaking donations, I could not understand why the American Red Cross did not ask for tech teams to automate at least some of its “Client Service Centers.”

Health Care and National Guard Shortages

Most of our clients received their first heath-care services after the storm at our site. Our nurses, EMTs, paramedics, and mental health professionals were using hard-earned personal or vacation time to volunteer their services. Despite the fact that they were very well trained and extremely capable, their hands were tied by American Red Cross insurance policies that limited the services they could provide. For example, they were prohibited from distributing highly needed tetanus shots, life-saving re-hydration IVs, and conducting routine blood-sugar tests for diabetics. Top-notch professionals, including nurses, paramedics, and a medic who served in Iraq with Canadian Special Forces, were frustrated that they could not put their desperately needed skills to good use.

The only medical professionals “able” to deliver these life-saving services were National Guard medics. The members of the National Guard at our site were incredibly supportive, professional, and capable. After about a week, over my objections, our National Guard support was cut from forty to ten and we lost our medics. Thousands of Americans could not receive tetanus shots and we were forced to call over-stretched ambulances to handle routine needs our nurses and medics were well trained to handle.

Lack of Supplies, Management, and Accountability

Lines formed immediately after the curfew was lifted each morning. Countless families drove hours and slept in their cars, hoping they would join the line early enough to receive assistance. Without tents to shade the long line, our exhausted and sometimes sick and injured clients would bake under the Mississippi sun for hours, only to receive $360 checks that many could not cash due to massive cash shortages throughout the region. Many were exploited by a Louisiana-based bus charging for trips to our site because the American Red Cross had not yet opened similar Louisiana sites. After losing family members, homes, cars, jobs, and possessions, $360 wasn’t much. In many places, removing a tree from a home (if you were lucky enough to still have one) cost over $1000.

My time was split between managing my site and dealing with myriad mixed messages, constantly changing orders, and policy updates from our equally confused and unprepared off-site “managers” completely out of touch with the communities served by my site. Although my “Client Service Center” was advertised by American Red Cross Public Affairs as a more successful relief site, we were unprepared to meet the basic needs of the devastated community.

The public was led to believe that the American Red Cross had things under control. Any indication of a failed or seriously lacking disaster relief operation would have significantly compromised the organization’s fundraising efforts. Fundraising was put before the truth. While any government agency would be expected to comply with freedom of information laws, the American Red Cross was able to escape that public scrutiny and, as a result, people at my site suffered.

The public deserves more oversight and accountability of a multi-billion dollar, Congressionally chartered, Emergency Support Function-Six performing, publicly subsidized, disaster response agency.