feature stories

Comfort from the storms

by Natalie Bell

Dec 8, 2005 1:52 PM

It has been close to 10 weeks since Grace Garrison, a Federation of Nurses/UFT member, returned from the hurricane-wrecked Gulf Coast, and she still lives with the tragedy of the stories her patients told.
“They would bring tears to your eyes with their stories about when they were trying to get away,” she said. “Families were separated. They didn’t know where each other were.”

Garrison said that she saw about 60 patients a day during the two weeks in September that she spent in the region as a Red Cross volunteer.

Many of them, she said, were as grateful for the time she took to listen as for the medical care she provided.
It was some of the most physically and emotionally demanding work that this 16-year veteran of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York and former emergency-room nurse had ever done.
Still, she said unequivocally, “If I had to do it again, I would.”

Garrison is among the more than 40 UFT-represented nurses so far who have traveled to the region as part of the union’s efforts to help care for survivors.

As hurricanes Katrina and Rita fade from national consciousness, much remains to be done.
“This is not a short-term project,” Anne Goldman, special representative of the Federation of Nurses/UFT, said of the “post-traumatic health-care crisis” in the Gulf region. The need for nurses there continues, she said.
Sending nurses is just one part of the UFT’s comprehensive response to what the National Hurricane Center said may be the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

While almost all of the school districts outside New Orleans that suffered flooding have reopened, the storm-ravaged Gulf states are slashing their budgets as schools scramble to stay solvent. In Louisiana, K-12 funding was cut by more than $63 million, which will cause the deferral of needed maintenance and will likely increase class sizes. Displaced teachers in that state face the possibility of losing their health-insurance benefits in the next few weeks.

As soon as the depths of the destruction wrought by Katrina became known in late August, UFT President Randi Weingarten established the UFT Katrina/Rita Relief Fund. Union officials put out the call for household items and school supplies and UFT members throughout the city responded, bringing hundreds of items to borough offices over the next several weeks.

Weingarten helped give a spirited send-off when the items were loaded onto three trucks at UFT headquarters on Nov. 17 to be shipped to schools in Baton Rouge, La.
The trucks carried 3,000 cubic feet of goods, including copy machines, paper, computers, printers, books, teaching materials, men’s and women’s clothing, backpacks, insulated coolers, thermoses, bottled water and two cases of dog food.

Monetary donations to the UFT Fund are being funneled to the national AFT Disaster Relief Fund, which has identified 15,000 AFT members in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama — teachers, school support staff and others — who were forced to evacuate their homes in the wake of Katrina. The AFT is issuing financial assistance grants, starting at $500 each.

To date, the AFT has collected $616,736 nationwide toward its $2 million goal, including $181,298 from New York State locals. The UFT has set a goal of collecting $400,000.

“Fund-raising is essentially an ongoing effort because the needs are so great,” says UFT Vice President for Elementary Schools Michelle Bodden, who chairs the committee overseeing the relief fund.

In addition to the UFT’s institutional support, concern for the hurricane survivors has prompted several schools and some individuals to mount their own relief efforts.

Belle Chasse Primary and Franklinton Elementary in Louisiana sent help to Lower Manhattan’s PS 234, when it was shaken in the wake of 9/11. So when Katrina nearly destroyed the two schools, PS 234 saw fit to return the favor.

“We did a ‘Give Up to Give Back’ campaign,” said PS 234 chapter leader Francine Cornelius.

“After 9/11, the kids at Belle Chasse had sent us some really nice handwritten letters of support. Now we’re sending them books and school supplies,” said Annie Luce, a parent who coordinated PS 234’s relief campaign.

The two low bayou country schools and one other were left taking in many extra students when Katrina destroyed six other schools in the district.

PS 234 students in grades K-1 collected construction paper, crayons and coloring books; grades 2-3 donated backpacks; and 4th- and 5th-graders brought in writing tablets and rainy day games. All students were asked to donate one book each, written for a young person at his or her grade level. They collected more than 500 books for Belle Chasse.

The other Louisiana school, Franklinton, donated money to PS 234 after 9/11. Inspired by that experience, Luce said her students raised $7,000 for Franklinton to help it rebuild a playground.

At Frederick Douglass Academy V, a new small middle school in the Bronx, a powerful sense of duty to “do something” for hurricane survivors motivated students to raise $1,500.

“After they saw it on the news, a lot of kids were very upset,” said Joanna Coe, a guidance counselor at Frederick Douglass. “They were asking a lot of questions like, “Are we going to have a hurricane? What’s going to happen to those people who are homeless now?’” Many of them wanted to know what they could do to help, she said.

In collaboration with the Red Cross, the kids sold red, plastic bracelets, each with an emblem of a cross and the words “Always There,” for $1 each. The kids took on the task with cathartic zeal, said Coe, selling 1,500 bracelets in two weeks.

The staff also organized a poster contest to allow students to express their concerns.

“They learned they could make a difference,” Coe said. “It affirmed their sense of citizenship.”

In Chelsea, PS 11 raised $7,368 for Hurricane Katrina victims. In recognition of their efforts, 14 4th- and 5th-graders from the school marched at the front of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and cut the ceremonial parade ribbon.

A Queens elementary teacher, Susan McGuire-Crenny, of PS 19, Corona, mobilized dozens of people throughout the Northeast to donate supplies, (see page 21).
As for the health-care needs of hurricane survivors, UFT-represented nurses say the degree of trauma that many have suffered should not be underestimated. With families divided and communities torn apart, many survivors remain in need of post-disaster care, they say.
Along the Gulf Coast this fall, people lined up for hours to see a nurse or doctor for a variety of problems, including missing glasses, dentures and medication, extremely high blood-sugar levels or blood pressure and stress-related ailments.

Garrison, the VNS nurse, worked first in a Red Cross service center in Alabama and later in a shelter in Mississippi during her stint in the region.
At the shelter, Garrison recalled treating for extremely high blood sugar an older lady who had managed a harrowing escape from the rising waters in New Orleans. The woman and several of her daughters got out when her husband commandeered an abandoned tractor-trailer. He had never driven one before, but he drove this one and rescued several people who were trapped. The woman’s son-in-law and a grandchild didn’t make it, however.

At one point, the trailer that the woman and others got out in got so full that there was no room left and one woman was left standing with her baby. “So she threw up her baby and said, ‘Save my child!’ The woman’s sister-in-law caught the baby in the air,” Garrison recalled. The mother who was left behind was later reunited with her baby in Mississippi.

Although the woman was afraid for her loved ones who were still separated, she told Garrison she was grateful for the medical attention and the hotel where she would sleep that night.

The woman said she believed she was going to be all right. “God saved me for a purpose,” she said.