The Adventures of Chester: San Antonio Katrina Relief Update

An Alert Reader emails the following about her recent experiences working with evacuees in San Antonio:

Anyway, I went out to building 1536 and put in my first 12 hour shift on Friday 9/9 and was back out there on Sat, Sun, Mon, Tues. I took my husband out there on Saturday and he painted with some of the little kids. I
guess that I should have mentioned that they put me in the daycare/play area the first day and I worked there every day after that. Very difficult and trying conditions. Horrible problems with the older kids completely unsupervised and beating the crap out of the little ones, parents taking off and leaving the children for 12 hours or more and stumbling in drunk at 1am and us still sitting there with the poor little things, child protective services
taking away another two children from a Mom who was really messed up and then her coming after the volunteers and threatening us-one way to lose good volunteers! We were unable to get security on many occasions, even when I was really scared and begging, violent children going through withdrawals (can you believe it?) volunteers who only stayed an hour before leaving in horror, hungry, dirty children that no-one bathed or fed or pottied
unless we did it, no hand-washing facilities or clean-up area and lots of these children had really bad diarrea and vomiting. Pee and poo everywhere! Absolutely no help from the powers that be, except inane rules like "we
would really like it if you would wear a white t-shirt tomorrow so that we can all be uniform in appearance"
And we would pick up these poor little kids and they would just hang onto us, they had to be peeled off our necks. Lots of love and affection and they really wanted our protection. But the big kids made life hell, so I tossed them out one night and they went over to the bed area and started pegging us with rocks. I was the last one out on Monday night and was told that no-one could walk me to my car, that security couldn't leave their posts; this was
after the admin people had told me that one of the mothers was looking for me to beat me up (the one who had her kids removed by CPS) I kid you not, I was scared to death and it sure was a long walk to my car at midnight. Tuesday was worse, if you can imagine and every day we were so short handed, 30 kids or more and only 2 or 3 volunteers, then if we had to take a child to the porta-potties outside then we were a man down until the person
came back. Crazy. My husband said no more, that if the Red Cross can't provide secure parking and an escort to the cars and keep us from being threatened by the "clients" then he says I can't go back.

Well, no wonder they aren't letting the press in there. This does not surprise me I hate to say. When I went down to volunteer it was chaos. I don't think I would let Mrs. C go back by herself either.

Perhaps all of this has some relevance to a request by a reader to discuss the private vs. the public sector and civil-military relations. Things would of course be much more organized if the military ran such facilities, but I think people know that. I don't think that's a great idea though, because the military needs to be focused on fighting abroad, not inwardly focused here in the US. Also, I'm just not a big fan of active duty military activity (aside from training of course) domestically. I think posse comitatus was a good idea.

In the end, a clear hierarchy and chain of command, as offered by the military, would alleviate a number of these friction-type problems in relief efforts. But I'm not sure that's possible because of the multitude of agencies involved. I have little faith in the average bureaucrat to be Johnny-on-the-Spot in getting anything done. It's not always their faults either. Institutions breed complacency and risk-aversion. These two traits lead to problems in chaotic and rapidly changing environments.

Thoughts, readers?

Posted by Chester on September 20, 2005 8:43 PM to The Adventures of Chester