In the days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Debbie and I, like millions of Americans, watched the images coming out of New Orleans with disbelief. We saw flooded neighborhoods, people stranded on rooftops, families crowded into shelters, and thousands of people who had suddenly lost nearly everything they owned.
It was difficult to watch from the safety of Iowa and not wonder what we could do to help.
At the time, Debbie and I both worked for GuideOne Insurance in West Des Moines and were members of the company's safety committee. The Polk County Health Department contacted GuideOne looking for four volunteers. Iowa was preparing to receive evacuees from New Orleans, and a planeload was expected to arrive in Des Moines. Debra and I volunteered.
For several days, local television had been showing preparations underway at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. The Varied Industries Building had been transformed into a massive reception and processing center capable of handling as many as 1,000 people.
When we arrived at the Fairgrounds, we first reported to a security area, where we checked in and were given identification tags. From there, we walked a few blocks across the grounds to the Varied Industries Building.
It was an extraordinary sight. The building is enormous, but much of that enormous space had been filled with row after row of cots supplied by the Iowa National Guard. Acres of them seemed to stretch across the floor, waiting for people who might arrive with little more than the clothes they were wearing.
There were areas for registration, medical evaluation and other services. State and local agencies and volunteers were ready to receive people, determine what they needed and help them begin figuring out what came next.We checked in with Polk County and joined about 75 other volunteers and then we waited.
Earlier that day, a small group of evacuees had arrived by plane from New Orleans and had already been processed through the system. We understood that another flight might be coming, possibly carrying many more people.No one knew exactly when, or even if, it would arrive.
While we were waiting, a middle-aged couple walked into the processing center. They hadn't arrived on one of the organized flights. Somehow, they had driven all the way from New Orleans to Des Moines and had been directed to the Fairgrounds.
I still remember how they looked. They were dirty. They were exhausted. And more than anything else, they looked stunned.The man's shirt had blood stains on it. We never learned their story. We didn't know what they had seen, what they had experienced, where they had slept, or how they had managed to make the long drive from New Orleans to Iowa. A few forms were completed, and before long the couple was escorted to a hospital for evaluation and treatment. We were told that eventually they would be placed in a local hotel.
For me, that brief encounter made everything we had been watching on television suddenly very real. Katrina was no longer just pictures of flooded streets and desperate people hundreds of miles away. Two people who had lived through it had walked through the doors and stood only a few feet from us.
The rest of the evening was mostly waiting.Dozens of volunteers stood ready. Hundreds upon hundreds of empty cots waited across the enormous building. Medical personnel, government agencies, relief organizations and volunteers were prepared for an influx of people who had lost their homes and had nowhere else to go. But the plane never came.
At about 8:00 that evening, we were told that no additional evacuees would be arriving in Iowa that night and that we could go home. Our names were placed on a call list in case volunteers were needed during the following weeks. Debbie and I walked back across the Fairgrounds and went home.
We hadn't done very much that evening. We hadn't rescued anyone, handed out hundreds of meals or helped a family settle into a new home. Mostly, we had simply shown up and waited. Throughout the Varied Industries Building were people who had also simply shown up. Nurses, government employees, National Guard personnel, Red Cross workers and ordinary volunteers were standing by because strangers they had never met might need them.
The acres of empty cots were evidence of something more than preparation for a disaster. They represented a community saying, "If you need a place to go, we'll make room for you." Most of those cots were never needed. And perhaps that was fortunate.
