Katrina — From the Front Lines
11 Sep 2005
Anne Gervasi is a licensed psychologist. She donated
her time and her talent working with Katrina refuges
at first, Reunion Arena and then, the Civic Center.
This is her first hand account and reaction to what
she had to deal with.
First-hand reaction to Katrina refuges
There are so many words that come to mind. As a
scholar I am thinking Diaspora, social displacement,
systemic disruption, mass trauma, pandemic and
unbelievable chaos. As a clinician, I am looking at
something that we have never been trained to handle in
this country-a level of victimization and its
resultant psycho-social ripples that mandate a whole
new field of clinical practice-mass victimology.
Katrina kicked the top off of a racist and social
termite’s nest that has been growing beneath the
ground since Reconstruction. These were deeply
religious people who have lost God and for that
matter, faith and hope. Hope has been replaced by
magical thinking that augurs a second and more
terrible level of social disruption and anger not far
down the road.
Over and over, I kept hearing a framing of self that
puzzled me until I realized that this is how it must
have been for blacks after Reconstruction. Over and
over, people said, “everyone has been so wonderful,
thank you, thank you.” When I said, “there is no need
to thank us, you are our fellow citizens and we want
to help you-American to American,” there would be a
long pause as if the idea of being the same never
struck them before.
They are angry and it is growing. The system failed
them. For that matter, there is no system because all
the safeguards and preparations that we thought were
in place aren’t there. I have been begging anyone who
would listen over the past two years for a program in
mass victimology to prepare for the next tragedy after
9/11. Now it is here and the lack of organization,
science, and preparation are going to result in
terrible consequences for us as a nation.
Imagine sending people who have been assimilated into
the most stable demographic population in America into
cities and towns all over the US who are as unprepared
as the victims to understand their sense of
dislocation and their support needs. The lower Gulf
States have a language, a history, a social dynamic, a
faith, a societal structure, and a ritual system
unlike any other in America. These people have lived
in and been acculturated to this system for
generations. When the dust settles and the mud dries,
we are going to see all over America, a nation that
will lose patience with the needs of a foreign refugee
population. Abandoned once again, the fury and the
trauma that have been momentarily quieted by the
outpouring of empathy and support post-crisis, will
arise larger and more terrible than we have been
equipped as a nation to handle. I hear it now, over
and over, in the survivor stories, in the loss of
self, and the need to reclaim dignity and power.
Right now, numbness is being replaced by magical
thinking. “People want me here-here is better. I think
I’ll stay here.” What is going to happen when reality
sets in? The bulk of people who are planning to stay
don’t understand the system here. Even though we abut
borders, we are a vastly different nation. At least we
are southerners. What is going to happen to the
thousands being sent to Connecticut or Illinois or New
Jersey? They are being offered free apartments,
furniture etc., by generous and well meaning people
who haven’t thought the long term consequences through
very well. A lot of the apartments are in areas where
they won’t have transportation or jobs. What is going
to happen six months down the road when the magic
wears off and the help slowly fades? How about the
holidays for a people who thrive on ritual, tradition,
and celebration?
The trauma they are experiencing is so profound that
we have no cultural term or machinery set up for it.
The dead and nameless bodies by the thousands rotting
in the water, arriving dead on the buses with them, or
dying next to them in the shelters are a huge
festering wound that no one dares mention. This is a
true Diaspora the likes of which we haven’t seen since
Reconstruction. The immediate needs that are being
addressed ignore the greater traumas yet to be spoken.
No governmental system can survive the number of
wounded and disillusioned people that we are going to
see sprouting up all over America. Something far
greater and more organized has to be done.
Then to the helpers and what is happening there. Turf
wars have already sprung up. In the name of “I know
better than you do,” chaos and wasted energy are
multiplying. The Red Cross was initially in charge of
certifying the credentials of the helping therapists.
After Oklahoma City and the pretenders who arrived
there, this seemed like a wonderful clearing house.
Everyone who wanted to help had to go through a brief
orientation and a thorough checking of credentials.
Only licensed professionals were allowed. Driver’s
licenses were checked for criminal records. This
seemed to be a common sense excellent approach to the
question of rapists, pedophiles, and other thugs being
denied access to a vulnerable population. Actually,
things ran better than I expected at the beginning.
Then in came the physicians who I guess felt that
their non-existent coursework in this area qualified
them to better run things. Immediate chaos,
disorganization, and all sorts of ersatz “helpers”
began running around. They grabbed our current Red
Cross badges and then stopped us from going back on
the floor to finish seeing our patients without the
new badges, which they just happened to be out of. We
had an optometrist with prescriptive lenses but no
glasses or readers and no idea when he’d ever see any.
We had a deaf booth but no deaf helpers. In the midst
of all this chaos, thousands and thousands of the
walking wounded mixing with the powerless
well-intentioned came the whispered word, pandemic.
Lots of people are suddenly getting sick, and we have
to have precautions. Don’t eat or drink or touch the
patients. We only have one bottle of disinfectant in
the mental health section, so come back here-the
length of the Convention Center-after each patient.
“What of the people who are being cycled out of here?”
“What are we sending into the population?” If people
are sick and contagious, where are the precautions to
separate the vulnerable? What of precautions such as
masks and gloves to keep the medical professionals and
first responders safe? All the here and now is
suspended in the hope that maybe tomorrow will take
care of itself and the worst won’t happen. Those are
the question we asked on the first day. NO ONE IS IN
CHARGE.
Therefore, there is no consistent answer or approach
or forethought. I am no infection guru but as soon as
I heard on day one that people with no water were
forced to drink water with bloated bodies, feces, and
rats in it, the thought of cholera, typhoid, and
delayed disease immediately occurred to me. What if
the fears of disease are correct? People are fanning
out throughout America. Where is the CDC?
In the age of computers, we are doing worse than the
pencil squibs and the rolls of paper to log in the
displaced after World War II. Literacy and computer
access seems to be considered as a given for people
who have lost it all. Accessing FEMA is through a
website. People are in shelters waiting for FEMA to
come “in a few days.” “Be patient.” The Lieutenant
Governor of Louisiana pumped my hand and replied to my
desperate queries about how to help people find their
parents and babies, “Be patient-give us a few days.”
The mothers who have lost their children, and there
are many, and the children who have lost their
parents, have had it with the “be patient” response.
The shelters are surprisingly silent. It is hard to
find the traumatized mothers because they cry
silently. One mother asked how patient I would be if
my five-month-old was somewhere unknown for over a
week. Over and over, others would ask, “Do you think
my baby has milk and diapers?” “Do you think they are
being kind to my baby?” And then, so softly that I
would have to ask them to repeat, “Do you think my
baby is okay?” My response-the convenient lie. Every
time I said, “of course,” I prayed to God that it was
true.
I am sure that there is a special ring of hell for the
media: The survivor stories end-on-end for the
titillation of the public. I heard Soledad O’Brien say
something about the still unrecognized need to address
the psychological trauma. I sent a response to the CNN
tip-line that there were hordes of every manner of
mental health professional working 24/7. CNN’s
response? Dr. Phil and the stories of the survivors”
on Larry King. They went to the guy who lost his
clinical license for serious professional infractions
to tell the stories? I could see the “entertainer”
down there gathering tales of the already exploited so
that he and Larry could both pimp their ratings. The
real unsung mental health heroes, the counselors,
psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists
dealing with un-medicated psychosis and severe
traumatic responses were represented by Dr.
“Keep-It-Real”? We don’t need tabloid help from the
media. Scream about accountability and point fingers
for those who can’t. Where is the real help from the
media? Help us find those babies and parents and
missing family. We have a man in one of the shelters
who is caring for four kids. They call him uncle. He
is actually the cousin of the fianc� of the mother who
is probably dead. The children are silent. They sit
and play and weep with open mouths that can’t scream.
Where is the media to scream for them?
Finally, to hell with this “no blame game.” The
stories that I know to be true are enough to make me
boil. The compassionate foreign doctors who can’t find
anyone to validate their credentials, the expensive
mobile hospital still sitting parked waiting for
federal paperwork to move into Louisiana, the five
C130s sitting on the Tarmac in San Diego since the
night of Katrina, still waiting for orders to move.
Where the hell are the beds? We have some old people
sleeping on hot plastic pool floats with no sheets.
They are still no showers for people who have walked
for hours through fetid waters. Their skin is breaking
out in rashes. Still no showers. Where the hell are
the DeCon showers bought with Homeland Security money
that can shower 30 people at a time. The convention
centers have no bathing facilities so the filth and
skin reactions are getting worse. What of lice? There
are no clothes for the really heavy and large. I was
reduced to writing the women I knew who went to Weight
Watchers to comb their attics for “before” outfits.
When I arrived with the sack of my gatherings, I had
to engage in a full scale battle and puff myself up to
all my red-headed doctor fury to get them distributed
to the women still sitting there in their stinking
clothes.
The survivors are like the Mayor of New Orleans who
apologized to George Bush for his anger. “If we tell
the way we feel, maybe help will stop.” All the
apologists on the air distancing George and his
co-vacationers and idiot appointees should be
impeached. I liked Nagin when he called it all
bullshit. He was right. How about Haley Barbour
complaining about the lack of support for his state?
Did he so soon forget his past life and what he did to
set up this government of spin artists? If they had
acted like a government the body count would be less.
The aid would be better managed. The days of filth,
and feces, and death would have been ended sooner. God
help all of the poseurs in charge when these folks
finally get in touch with their justifiable rage. Did
you see the White House’s logo for the hurricane?
George and some asshole in a ball cap against a
background of Katrina waving the flag. They had the
energy and time for a nice logo but no time to get the
elements of help in gear?
The tragedy is leavened by some moments of farce, the
guy who arrived with a case of Gucci shoes in various
sizes that he “saved” from his closet. The man wearing
twelve expensive watches up his arm. I guess he is a
punctual sort. There are the too-poignant-for-words
vignettes. I saw a lady sitting on a blanket holding a
photo of two children that she had pulled from the
water. She kept crying and looking at it. I thought
they were her children. She didn’t know whose they
were. They were just losses and she mourned them.
Of course there were the criminals, thugs, and
mobsters. One of the greatest indictments of the “spin
machine” that is going to come from this situation
will be the repeated characterizations of the victims
as lawless and criminal. Over and over I heard people
tell me about how ashamed they were to be portrayed
that way. Ninety-nine percent of these people never
were characterized as anything but lawful and good
citizens. In their most desperate hours to be reduced
to taking food and water to survive and then to be
lumped with the television thieves and the shooters is
too shameful for most of them to bear. I heard from
hospital employees that survived on a cup of watered
grits so that the patients could make it. And then I
heard had they had to hide the ones that didn’t in
closets to keep up the morale of the others.
The people that survived this tragedy and the people
who help them all know one truth. The help and the
love and the care that has been extended to them have
been on a citizen-to-citizen basis. The churches,
doctors, therapists, and ordinary citizens who are
giving all they can in time and resources are managing
to band-aid at the most elementary level-neighbor to
neighbor. The government has failed. We are more
vulnerable now than before 9/11 because faith in the
system is gone. No system can sustain itself as a
viable entity when the citizenry are the walking
wounded. Victims implode a system from within and
expose its decay. This is the beginning of the end
unless we can get a drastic change of philosophy and
restore the government to a system “by the people for
the people.” Right now nobody down here believes we
have that.
Anne Gervasi
it’s heart-breaking..