A Lesson Learned from Hurricane Rita
Praying for better results
As a National Guardsman, I responded to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the late summer of 2005. As a civilian, I responded to the earthquake in Haiti as a volunteer in 2010. Since 2019, I've been conducting annual disaster relief training for a subduction zone earthquake in the imaginary country of Cascadia in cooperation with ShelterBox USA.
My 2023 Directed Fiction novel, “Can You Survive the Russia-Ukraine War?” follows a disaster relief team into Moldova.
My upcoming serial fiction novel, "The Flight of the St. Paul," is about an airship carrying disaster relief supplies from the Western United States to Uvinza, Tanzania.
I've been in and out of the emergency room this month for some non-life-threatening ailments. Otherwise, I would consider volunteering with Samaritan's Purse (a great organization) to do my part for the Hurricane Helene recovery.
My point is that I care a lot about disaster recovery efforts.
That’s why this made me so mad
I saw this come across the news feeds:
Tech billionaire Elon Musk took to X on Friday afternoon to claim the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is "actively blocking" volunteers who try to help the struggling citizens of western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
I’m not there now, so I don't know what's really going on
I'm not able to respond to this disaster except with prayers and generous donations. I encourage you to do the same. If you are so inclined, here’s a good link: https://www.samaritanspurse.org/article/pray-for-those-in-helenes-path/
But I did learn an important lesson a long time ago during Hurricane Rita that might be useful now:
We'd just returned to Lake Charles from Cameron Parish (which had been devastated).
I met an old Cajun guy who was incensed with the military for not allowing him to go help his friends.
His voice was gravely, and his accent so thick that I could barely understand what he said. He finally communicated to me that he was furious with the military for blocking a road down which he had friends and relatives.
“I’ve got me a tractor, and I need to get me down there to help ‘em out. But you won’t let me go!” he shouted.
Here’s a picture of that meeting:
At first, he was suspicious of all the military trucks and armed soldiers descending on his town. His attitude was, “You’d better not get in my way!”
Many people in that community felt that way. Nothing would stop them from putting all the broken pieces back together.
We let him go help his friends! You can tell from the picture that the tension was ratcheted down as I bent to pet his dog. Before that, I thought he might punch me in the face!
I’ll be terribly upset if the government mismanages this disaster
In 2005, I was that government representative. And I’d been killing myself every day to make some kind of difference to people whom I consider to be my neighbors and fellow countrymen. Furthermore, everybody I knew and worked with was doing the same thing for precisely the same reason.
Their initial suspicion soon gave way to a genuine friendliness and a spirit of cooperation that more closely matched what was in my own heart. It was all about this: Americans uniting in the face of adversity like we always do.
After a while, they got it. Instead of mistrust, their biggest concern was that we would leave too soon.
I’ll be praying for better results for Hurricane Helene's recovery.