Volunteers needed to help in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina’s devastating attack on Louisiana and Mississippi has South County disaster agencies desperately seeking people who can help relief efforts from the terrible storm.
“We need people in the area soon, to relieve those who have been on duty almost non-stop since early Sunday,” said Deborah Suzuki, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) coordinator in the Morgan Hill Office of Emergency Services. “They won’t go on break because they say there are too many people on roofs still. Most of them have been working three days straight with no sleep. They need relief.”
Suzuki said Wednesday that the Red Cross is asking for immediate deployments to the area for one to two weeks, and, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is gathering names of CERT graduates willing to travel to the battered states and serve for two weeks. By Thursday, they had located the CERT volunteers.
Hurricane Katrina has been ranked the third most destructive hurricane in the last 150 years. It hit the Gulf Coast area with a vengeance Sunday morning, forcing thousands who could not evacuate or did not heed the call, to take refuge in the New Orleans Superdome. Many were stranded on rooftops as rapidly rising floodwaters caught them by surprise, and levees surrounding the city broke early in the week sending 80 percent of the city below water. The death toll is rising, according to the governors of both states, and will continue to climb as searchers continue their grim work. In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin told the Associated Press Wednesday evening he fears thousands may be dead.
If Nagin’s estimate proves true, it would make Katrina the deadliest natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the AP reported.
The problem, Suzuki said, is there are many who are trained to help in exactly this type of disaster, but FEMA is still collecting names, and, other than a response team of firefighters stationed in Menlo Park, no one from this area has been deployed.
“Any time you have a big organization like that, the wheels just move so slowly,” she said. “I feel so bad when I watch the broadcasts with interviews of the teams that are there. They won’t take breaks because they feel the lives of those still waiting to be rescued are riding on them if they take a break, they feel, someone will die.”
After days without rest, the rescuers put their own lives in danger, as well as the lives of others if they make faulty decisions, Suzuki said.
“They aren’t thinking clearly when they haven’t slept,” she said. “We are trained to take breaks every 12 hours. The military and the Coast Guard who are there are following that. You must be off every 12 hours, or you risk others besides yourself. What if, through lack of sleep, you fail to see that a building is ready to collapse, and you, as team leader, order everyone in. There are so many mistakes you can make in a situation like this that can be deadly.”
Urging area volunteers to come forward, Suzuki said she will collect names for FEMA and hope that the agency issues deployment orders immediately. CERT graduates want to go where they are most needed and can use their skills, not just to help the Red Cross hand out food, she said.
“We are needed there, we can help,” said Suzuki. She said she would go immediately if she were not pregnant. “This is what we were trained for. Many of us have worked other disasters and would be an asset.”
Marilyn Dubil covers education and law enforcement for The Times. Reach her at (408) 779-4106 Ext. 202 or at [email protected].
