Transcript of Barbara’s podcast.

Kay Shepherd: Here with us is Barbara from California who has been in South Eastern Louisiana for a week and has a few stories to tell. Barbara thanks for joining us. OK I guess the first thing I want to ask you is when did you first head out to Louisiana, when did you arrive and what have you seen since you’ve been there?

Barbara: Wow, that’s a lot of questions, I left a week ago tomorrow, I don’t even now the dates anymore I just, they all run into each other.  I left from California on Monday about 2.30 in the morning and met up with a general practitioner doctor in Tucson, Arizona and we arrived in the Covington area on Wednesday around 1.00 in the morning.

As to what I have seen it’s devastation, it’s, it’s, you think you’ve seen the worst and then you go into another area and it’s even more horrifying and there is no better. I mean I guess there are some areas with less trees down perhaps and there are some townhouses that have been very little touched but the general rule is the devastation, is, is a horrifying magnitude, absolutely horrifying magnitude and it’s a huge, huge area of land that is affected.

KS: What about the response on the ground, what does the relief response in the area look like?

B: I can only speak currently about Bogalusa which is north of New Orleans, it’s a very, it’s in Washington parish which is for the most part an awfully poor area.  Bogalusa is made up of a paper mill which employs something like 1400 people and a medium security prison which employs another few hundred people and what I have seen FEMA is here, Red Cross is here, I have not seen Salvation Army but I did hear today they have a distribution spot.  I’m going to check that out tomorrow.  I, they have a kitchen set up at Red Cross, one of the organisations out of Illinois is working under the Red Cross and supplying food, there’s a baptist church across the street from them that apparently is taking lists of names and trying to send crews out to get trees off of roofs.

As far as the Red Cross and FEMA I, I just, I’m not seeing it, I’m not seeing it. They are definitely here, there’s one shelter that just opened a couple days ago, a Red Cross shelter, and they didn’t have showers, Illinois fire department group left their portable shower here and set it up for them so they have cold water showers.  Apparently I’ve heard from several of the residents that the food that they’re making them at the shelter is pretty inedible, I don’t know I haven’t seen it but a lot of people are going to the restaurant next door because they can’t eat the food.

I spent a few hours at the shelter yesterday and I don’t know, if I had been, if I was a victim in the shelter I guess I would want to see volunteers that you know maybe kind of interacted and didn’t act like they didn’t really care and like it was a real bad job to be there.

KS: I’m sorry, what about the Red Cross and FEMA, where are their efforts focused?

B: I’m not sure (chuckles).  I guess feeding the people perhaps with the kitchen that they have in town, at least the Red Cross and they have their shelter and you know there’s not a lot of people in shelter but most people will not leave their homes here because there’s so much looting and people are stealing things so if they leave their home no matter how bad a condition it’s in if they can’t take their things and put them into storage they’re not going to leave their homes, period. So they’re living in horrible conditions as a result.

As far as what FEMA is doing, I heard that they were, I was at a meeting Friday that was FEMA, military, Red Cross, the health services, the state health services, the president of the parish, there was a couple of the mayors and some of the law enforcement and FEMA had two people that they’d just brought that were scouting out areas that they could potentially bring trailers to for displaced people but they didn’t have a `We’re going to get this done by such and such day’, they just said they’re scouting out areas so I’m guessing maybe one day we’ll see a FEMA area here where people can live in trailers that, you know, that are displaced

KS: What about the peoples day to day needs, how are those being met or are they being met?

B: I’m not seeing it, I mean the people that can get to the Red Cross and can get meals are doing OK, probably, you know for the most part. Very few people have gotten FEMA checks. Almost no one, I have talked to no-one in Bogalusa who has gotten food stamps, been able to sign up for food stamps or have gotten Red Cross vouchers which total $300 per person. The people in outlying areas, many who don’t have cars and even many in the city and the towns that are elderly that don’t drive are not seeing people.  Red Cross is getting mobile units out but it doesn’t seem like they have the city gridded in any fashion from where they’re sending people here, here and here.

I checked on a woman who’ve been keeping tabs on her and her sister and they`re probably 80 and they just maybe a mile or so from where Red Cross’s kitchen is and they were fed one day and given some water and then I checked on them two days later and they still hadn’t been fed from two days ago so I dropped off more water and I found out no one asked her if she had any medical needs and she was out of meds so I got her her meds from the doctor and so a lot of people are not getting their basic needs met. There’s a lot of people that Red Cross just isn’t even talking to or FEMA isn’t talking to unless, I mean it’s just not happening.

KS: I guess another thing I wanted to ask is what do you hope will happen if the media attention that this place needs gets there, what do you hope the media can do to help this situation ?

B: From what I saw prior to coming here and what I’m seeing since I’ve come here the media is very, very focused on New Orleans and the parishes, Jefferson parish and the areas around New Orleans because they did take a hit and that’s a huge population area and it seems that the media is also focussing on different towns who have taken in many of the refugees and that’s fine and they have forgotten about the small towns that are suffering and have huge amounts that’s happened, you know, damage.  I was in Slidell today and could not stop crying, the damage and the human need there is huge.

Bogalusa, Franklinton, Bush, Pine, all these areas are hard hit and I don’t know that any of the media have actually gone there, any of the major media has even gone there. I would invite CNN or Fox or any of these people to give me a call and say `We’re coming, show us something’.  I can take them to one block where they will be appalled and that’s, I’m certain that is the norm.

I believe if the media come to the other small towns then…… I just know the Louisiana area that I’m in I know the area in Mississippi is horrific as well I think if media paid attention to this and made, made the government accountable for why this is so slow.

I mean they say funding, they say manpower they say so many things but the bottom line is this is America if we can mobilise an army and set up tents for hundreds of thousands of troops for military action we sure as heck should be able to mobilise the same thing in our own country if we don’t have the logistics of getting them somewhere else it’s, I just, and the media has that ability, the media needs to listen to the survivors and to the victims of this they need to not listen to the big powers, they need to listen to the person who is only making $12,000 to begin with and now they have nothing including a job and I don’t know where else to go but I think the media needs to sweep out into the path of the hurricane area and do human interest stories and bring it to America and let America hear the stories and to stop sugar coating it . I have heard stories from people who survived in New Orleans and what the media told us and what really these people went through, it’s much different and it’s time for America to hear the truth and be told the truth that’s what media, as I grew up that’s what media was about and it needs to get back to that.

We’re dealing with a natural disaster of historic proportions and hundreds of thousands of peoples lives are in danger and will continue to be in danger because we are not getting them help at all. The help is coming granted but we are not getting them the type of help that they need immediately it is not happening, it is not happening anywhere in this disaster zone and I will stand up to anyone on that comment.

KS: And there seems to be a kind of a disconnect between what, not just between what people think is going on and what is actually going on, but between what people think will help and what people actually need. Like the passing of a phone number or a web address, how are these people going to get phone access or internet access in this sea of devastation?? It doesn’t make sense and yet it continues to happen.

B: Well the Red Cross I can give you two examples I personally witnessed a woman at the Red Cross telling a 70 year old woman, I would judge her age to be 68-74 who had trees that needed to be removed from around her house so that she could get not only in and out but that she could get a blue roof on her house which is something FEMA is supposed to be doing and she went to the Baptist Church apparently to put her name on the list to get approved there and she went to the Red Cross to try to get vouchers and money and food and to find out where she needed to sign up for the blue roof, the blue roof program and this woman was incredibly condescending and patronising to her and said to her

`You know you need to go back to the back of the church and tell them you need those trees cut off your roof, you don’t belong here‘

and she goes `No I did that I don’t have trees on my roof but I have extensive roof damage and I need a blue roof and they said you could tell me where I need to go for that’

and she goes `Well you have to go to FEMA’

and she goes `Where’s FEMA?’

and she goes `Well it’s out of town‘

and she goes `Well can I get my Red Cross voucher now that I’m here? Can I do my paperwork and get my Red Cross voucher and my food stamps?’

and the woman said `No you have to call the number, we can’t do that for you here‘

and she goes `How am I going to call the number?’, she said `I don’t have a telephone’

and the woman then told her she needed to get on the computer and log on.

This woman never knew how to use the computer for god sakes and she told her as such.  So then the woman told her to go down to the gas station because they have ?? telephones and she can just stay there and call until she gets through to the 800 number which is FEMA and the Red Cross. This is a 70-year old woman.  She walked out and she, I mean she just wept, she walked out weeping. This woman from the Red Cross never put her arms around her never gave her any compassion and she walked out like that.

Then I got told another story by a man who had a wife with polio and he went to the Red Cross and said that he needed to file for food stamps, we need our check, our allotment, we need help and apparently even in his words he said and he has the name of the woman and by the way he described her I would be willing to bet it was the same woman and he said that he was angry but not in an abusive manner, he said it was like his second, third, fourth trip there and he had never gotten anywhere and this woman walked away from him and refused to talk to him and a young volunteer apparently came up and said `I’m sorry she apparently feels threatened by you and won’t help you’.

So the volunteers who the Red Cross claims have gone through crisis training obviously don’t realise that victims of a crisis are going through a mirage of emotions and anger is going to be one of them and they need to perhaps put an arm around the person and say lets just talk about your needs for a minute and then lets see what we can do, rather than walk away.  You can’t walk away from a victim and that’s what’s happening, there’s huge disconnect, huge disconnect.

I found out from FEMA that they do the blue roof but they don’t do it on tin roofs which a lot of people have tin roofs out here or I think he said slate roofs so somebody said `Well what do you do for their roof?’ and they said we’re going to take care of them it just seems you ask somebody and no one knows something and they send you to someone who knows even less and it’s like that with all the organisations.