August 29, 2008

Remembering Katrina ⁷

by Wendy • Notes From A Fire Chaplain

It's hard to believe Hurricane Katrina was three years ago, especially now that we are looking down the barrel at Gustav.  I watched the events in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast unfold on t.v. along with everyone else, shaking my head in utter amazement at the disaster that tore through 90,000 square miles.  Within a week I was down there in the thick of things with the Federation of Fire Chaplains.  At first we served at the emergency operation center in Baton Rouge counseling the ems and firefighters from all over the country that were temporarily housed at that facility.  These were the emergency workers that would travel each day into the heavily affected parishes to answer emergency calls and then return to Baton Rouge at the end of their shifts.  Those first few nights we slept on the floor of a church gym and the members of that church would wash our clothes and feed us sometimes as late as 2am.

Within a couple of days, a close chaplain friend of mine, Ken, (who I also call my chaplain partner) and I were sent to New Orleans to be embedded into body recovery teams.  I was sent to work along side of the Kentucky Mass Fatality Recovery Team.  They were a group of medical examiners, coroners, and funeral directors who were trained to respond to mass fatality incidents to identify, mark and then care for the bodies.  We were sent to a nursing home, the convention center, and then to freeway off/on ramps where refrigerated trucks would wait at the waters edge as boats would pull up carrying a body or two.  I had never seen so much death and carnage in one place in my life.  Even after responding to the World Trade Center, this seemed so much more overwhelming.  Even though we all carried a sense of honor, respect and dignity for the lives that were lost, we had to laugh and joke in order to survive the day…in order to survive the task of marking and tagging a body.

After each day's work, unless you were staying on the cruise ship, were police or military, you were required to leave New Orleans by 6pm or you would be arrested.  So we would drive the 70 something miles back to the emergency center in Baton Rouge, only to make the trek back the next day.  After a couple of days of driving back and forth we secured spots on the cruise ship that house the firefighters and police officers of New Orleans.  During the day we would continue our work on the body recovery teams and at night we would counsel and pray with the emergency workers who were so shell shocked that tensions ran high and violence would break out amongst brothers in uniform.  In the darkness of the night we would hear the occasional gun fire and the police would remind us that was the reason there was a curfew. 

On one particular day we decided to go look for firefighters and medics that were holed up in the firehouses still trying to protect life and property.  We were driving around the city as best we could and ended up lost in the middle of a very shady neighborhood surrounded by water, shanty houses, and an abandoned hearse.  We were trying to figure out where we were and how to get the heck out of there when an ATF agent pulled up and suggested that we leave that area.  We found out later on at the FEMA headquarters that we were in what was called a no-go gun zone.  Apparently they were not allowing anyone in that area unless they were military or highly trained police officers because gangs were hiding out there and were shooting to kill.  We had the hedge of protection around us on that day.

Still I will never forget seeing the whole town of St. Bernard's Parish being completely and utterly devastated.  There was not a house untouched by this beast of a storm.  Whole houses completely washed off of their foundations and came to rest a block away.  I will never forget having to mark off spots where bodies were because we did not have the capacity or the resources to recover them at the time.  I will never forget having to watch truckload after truckload of bodies arrive at the refrigerated trucks (aka The Reefers) and Ken and I having to say a quick prayer over each of them before the recovery workers would stack them inside.  I will never forget the decontamination routines, the smell in the air, the sight of weary recovery workers, and sound of utter silence during the day and gunfire at night.  And I will never forget how so many people came together to help in such dire circumstances.

I returned from New Orleans utterly burnt out and yet renewed for my passion of the chaplaincy.  I was shaky and tired and I still lived the disaster scene in my head for several weeks afterward.  And upon my return home we had to almost immediately evacuate for Hurricane Rita.  I was a mess on the inside thinking about what could happen to us.  We missed that hurricane by only a hundred miles or so but the impression of them both stayed with me for many, many months.  But, I became a better chaplain and a better person because of the experience.

Tonight as I watch the path of Gustav taking form, I am praying for all of us on the Gulf Coast.  I know it will hit somewhere but I pray that it will weaken and that it won't cause the devastation that Katrina or Rita did.  Keep us all in your prayers.