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Be Careful What You Wish For
Rich Galen Tuesday September 6, 2005
From Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Dear Mr. Mullings:
We seem to remember your column about Hurricane Katrina ending with the words, "Shut up and help." Now we see you are writing from Louisiana. Can we assume there has been some Divine Retribution?
Yes. Now, can we move on, please?
The reality is, I had e-mailed some folks at FEMA before the hurricane hit and said that if they needed some help, I hoped they would call on me. Friday, four days after the hurricane hit, I got a call which started with the words, "I need your date of birth and Social Security number."
I said something clever like, "Where am I going?"
The caller said something even more clever like, "You know where you're going and you're leaving for there at 0600 tomorrow from Reagan National."
So, I have been here in Baton Rouge since Saturday morning doing what I do.
SIDEBAR
A public relations firm by the name of Manning, Selvage & Lee has a claim on half of my time. When I told the managing director of the office, Don Hannaford, that I had volunteered for this duty, he said what I absolutely expected him to say: "Of course. Let me know what you need."
Kudos to MS&L for donating my services as part of a much, much larger national corporate effort to help relieve the astonishing level of misery and destruction down here.
END SIDEBAR
It is one of those oddities of life that just 50-or-so miles away there is total devastation. But here, aside from not having to sleep in a bus, life is very normal.
The Lad is also here, which is fraught with danger as we are very much alike and having us - as we are now - sitting five feet apart and typing on our respective laptops at 10 o'clock at night can easily end up in a death struggle of old movie lines and terrible puns.
Nevertheless, here's a story:
The Lad was working with a group of folks who had found out that a church in Shreveport had facilities to house 500 refugees from the Houston Astrodome. In one of those things which happens sometimes, the pastor The Lad was working with gave his cell phone number to someone else who gave it to someone else who give it to a woman in Metaurie who called him to say she and her two sons needed to be rescued.
The Lad asked her if they were in immediate danger. She said they were not, but their house was severely damaged and they wanted to leave.
He called the State Police who went out and got the family, taking them to a safe place.
Thus, The Lad helped improve the lot not just of those 500 people being transported to Shreveport, but also of a mother and her two sons in Metaurie who were frightened, hungry and thirsty.
That's my kid.
FEMA is catching a lot of flak for its supposed lack of responsiveness. Most - not all, but most - of that is absolutely undeserved. The men and women who work at FEMA are, to a person, absolutely dedicated to their jobs of helping alleviate suffering after a disaster strikes.
But to suggest there remains a lack of effort, is simply unfair and untrue.
Because of the unbelievable scale of this event, US Military assets have been brought in to buttress the FEMA efforts. All told there are some 61,000 civilian and military people - not counting volunteers like me - working along the Gulf Coast following Katrina.
To put that into perspective, that is about half the number of American military who are in Iraq.
No one yet knows how long it will take to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe it will never be rebuilt. Or perhaps they will rebuild in a different place and be named: Newer Orleans.
Once again, I find myself surrounded with people, including The Lad, who are totally dedicated to helping others.
Once again, I am blessed.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: The FEMA call to fire units from last week and a Mullfofo which clearly shows my job here.
--END --
Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen
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