Election Section

I have never been to the South. I never went to the Jazz Festival or Mardi Gras. So working with an East Bay city in developing a program to respond to the needs of evacuees is paradoxical. I am grateful to have worked with such a resilient group of people and saddened by the entire tragedy. I cannot capture in writing the experience that these people have endured. I can only imagine, and with certainty fall short of the mark, in terms of understanding their sense of loss, grief, anger and exhaustion. When I try to imagine being there, some specific accounts come to mind:  

• Floating on a refrigerator and watching an alligator navigate the newly flooded Ninth Ward. 

• Being plucked off a rooftop by a helicopter and deposited on a freeway overpass only to wait for three days without food or water.  

• The Convention Center appearing “gory” with human waste piling up along the perimeter walkways and no police in sight.  

• Losing a grandmother because she had been abandoned while being treated for a leg infection in a New Orleans medical center.  

It seems to me now that there were two disasters that the hurricane victims endured: The first was the hurricane and the failure of the levees. The second was the illusion that help would arrive and normalcy would resume.  

When was the last time you lost everything? When was the last time you slept on someone else’s couch for three weeks? What if your only hope for relief was dependent on a phone call you had to make. But the last 10 times you dialed you were put on hold for 30 minutes only to find out you had to call back later because the “computers were down.” Then consider the fact that many of these people have been victims all of their lives. Living in poverty and socially marginalized for generations. A town where despite corrupt police and dilapidated schools, the people of and around New Orleans made a home for themselves and made a community. New Orleans: The town where art and life, fantasy and reality, pleasure and suffering stew in the same steamy caldron. Now it appears as if New Orleans may just become folklore history itself.  

After three weeks of traveling, sleeping on couches, in cars and convention centers, about 30 families made it into our agency. Several came via Houston only to be chased out by another storm (Rita) a few weeks later. They came here because they knew someone who lived here. Some had grown up here and gone to Berkeley High School. They arrived with the shirts on their backs and bags under their eyes. Most had not had time to think about what they lost, but you could see it in their faces.  

FEMA and other disaster relief agencies seem to have a fast food approach to treating disaster victims: If we just give them cash and a trailer, then our job is done. Indeed the Red Cross is rolling up the tents and FEMA is trying to close down the disaster trailer parks. Unfortunately, many never got the trailer and many still have not received the money.  

The coming months are perhaps the most risky for these individuals and families. The Red Cross reports they are providing hotel rooms for 2,000 families in the Bay Area. Most of these rooms are in Alameda County. The vouchers for the rooms expire Dec. 1, days after Thanksgiving. One could predict that 500 families may be out on the street during the wet season if our community leaders and local government aren’t proactive. Additionally, the evacuees are at risk for a myriad of mental health issues as a result of their trauma. If further alienation can be mitigated and some restoration of stability and normalcy can happen, these risks can be minimized. But if we adopt the “get over it or go somewhere else” approach, we weaken the very fabric of our own community. The imagery that we saw a month ago on the news is fading. The press conferences and photo ops are over. There is little political capital in making right so much that went wrong. And yet we need to do the right thing.  

Berkeley resident W. Spence Casey holds a master’s degree in social welfare.