October 19, 2005

Making a Difference

GW Community Members Lend a Helping Hand to Those in Need After Hurricane Katrina

BY MATTHEW LINDSAY

Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama on the morning of Aug. 29. Thousands evacuated, thousands more decided to weather the storm, and, in the wake of the hurricane, thousands traveled to the Gulf Coast to aid the victims. Each individual affected by Hurricane Katrina has a story; these are just a few of the stories of how our friends and colleagues at GW responded in a time of need.

“He Brought Our Team Back Together”

Being able to communicate with your players is a key to success in coaching, as former GW head baseball coach Tom Walter would attest. Walter, who won 275 games over eight seasons at GW, took the head coaching job at the University of New Orleans (UNO) in 2004. In the wake of the hurricane Walter was unable to reach several of his players. He had evacuated to Atlanta, but with communication systems around New Orleans down, Walter had to resort to text messaging. After he had finally established that everyone on the team was safe, Walter was left with the problem of what to do next. New Mexico State University in Las Cruces had offered its facilities, but how would the team get there?

In stepped former GW baseball star and University Trustee W. Russell Ramsey.
“I received a phone call directly from Tom walking through his dilemma and looking to see if we could be helpful,” explained Ramsey. “This, without hesitation, led us to extend help where we could. So, through some staff brilliance and creativity, and care from the folks at Ramsey Asset Management, we thought it was a very important and timely service that we could provide to a high quality individual and group.”

Ramsey — the chair, CEO, and CIO of Ramsey Asset Management and managing general partner of the RNR Hedge Funds — and his wife Norma flew Walter and another UNO coach from Dulles Airport to Baton Rouge on Sept. 10 in a private plane to pick up 13 members of the UNO baseball team. The Ramseys then flew the players and coaches to New Mexico State University, where the entire team is enrolled in school and practicing together. Each of the 36 players and coaches on the UNO baseball team was given a bag of basic supplies — toothpaste, socks, shaving cream, razors, bed linens, notebooks, calculators, etc. — by the Ramseys to help ease the transition to their new school. “Words can’t express our gratitude,” said Walter. “For a gesture like that you can’t thank enough. He brought our team back together.”

“Taking Things One Day at a Time”

Stephanie Bridges, a Loyola law student, and her husband packed up their three children and left New Orleans on Sunday, Aug. 28, just 10 hours before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. They traveled to Atlanta, where members of their family took them in. However, after consulting with her family and hearing that many law schools were willing to accept displaced students Bridges decided she wanted to continue her legal studies. She placed a call to GW and left Atlanta for Washington, shortly after the telephone conversation, to arrive at GW Law School one hour before the deadline for displaced students.

“We hope to return to New Orleans, however we do not know when,” admitted Bridges. “There has been so much damage to homes and businesses in New Orleans. We are taking things one day at a time.”

An employee in GW’s Athletics Department has helped Bridges and her family feel more at home at GW by offering the Bridges family one side of a duplex located in Falls Church and outfitting the home with furniture, bedding, and kitchenware. “I do not know how we will be able to repay them for their kindness,” Bridges said.

“Each of Us Did What We Could”

A few days after residents evacuated from their homes along the Gulf Coast, medical and emergency management experts from across the country, including more than 20 GW faculty members, traveled to the areas ravaged by the hurricane. GW faculty members who traveled to the Gulf Coast helped the efforts in their own unique ways, including Beverly Westerman, assistant professor of exercise science, who volunteered with the group Noah’s Wish to organize animal rescues in Louisiana.

Dr. Glenn Geelhoed, professor of surgery, international medical education, and microbiology and tropical medicine, deployed to Jefferson Parish, LA, through his affiliation with Operation Lifeline, a relief effort coordinated by the Maryland Emergency Management Agency. In two and a half weeks Operation Lifeline tended to more than 6,200 patients at seven separate locations in Louisiana. “It was a rewarding experience for me… each of us did what we could and managed to turn around a desperate situation,” said Geelhoed, reflecting on his two weeks in Louisiana. “The good part of this experience is to see the neighbors helping each other — essentially the only social safety net I saw.”

Some of those who responded to the call for help waited for a week or two so they could provide a second wave of assistance to the area. Dr. Christina Catlett, medical director of GW’s Center for Emergency Preparedness, and Dr. Yolanda Haywood, assistant dean for student and curricular affairs and associate professor of emergency medicine, organized a medical team of 19 GW-affiliated volunteers. The group left Washington on Sept. 12 to help victims in Baton Rouge. “It was hard to sit through those first two weeks and wonder how we could best help,” said Catlett. “We decided to put together a relief team that could be dispatched where there was the most need. We didn’t want to go down immediately when everyone first responded, but chose to go later, when many had gone.”

Catlett returned to the Gulf Coast in late September with another team of 15 volunteers who worked in the region through the first week of October.

“We Didn’t Know What it Looked Like Before”

Several members of GW’s Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management (ICDRM), which is part of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, aided the response and relief efforts. Dr. Anthony Macintyre, associate professor of emergency medicine and associate research professor of engineering management and systems engineering, served as the medical officer for the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Incident Support Team. ICDRM students and alumni held critical positions within the FEMA operations center, the US Army Corps of Engineers operations center, and the National Communication Systems response center. Other institute staff members will soon travel to the Gulf Coast to assist the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with their after-action review.

Dr. Joseph Barbera, co-director of GW’s ICDRM and associate professor of engineering management, deployed to the Gulf Coast as the medical team manager of the 34-person Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, which arrived in Mississippi two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. In four days, Barbera’s team covered 36 square miles of wreckage, searching through light debris, looking for signs of life. Barbera, who had been on the ground in Indonesia after the December 2004 tsunami, compared the destructive characteristics of Hurricane Katrina with the tsunami that swept through Asia.

“As bad as it looks to us, we didn’t live there,” said Barbera who sympathized with the plight of local responders in Mississippi. “These weren’t our homes, our streets, our people. We didn’t know what it looked like before.”

Marvine Hamner, assistant professor of engineering management and systems engineering, went to Pascagoula, MS, with the American Red Cross. When the local Red Cross chapter executive collapsed and was hospitalized, Hamner stepped into the role of area coordinator for the Red Cross. Hamner was in Mississippi for three weeks, but the first few days were the hardest because all the communication systems in the area failed. With no means of communication, those responding to the needs of victims on the Mississippi coast were, “not able to convey to people outside the area the magnitude of the event, and that is what hurt us most,” said Hamner.

According to Hamner, the Red Cross and other relief groups combined to serve approximately 60,000 meals a day in the area, but were unable to keep up with the demand for food. Though she has returned to Washington, Hamner emphasized that the areas affected by Katrina will be suffering for years to come and people in these areas still need assistance.

The institute was able to assist Laura Steinberg, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tulane University, who evacuated New Orleans and is working with ICDRM for the semester. Steinberg, who researches the impact of disasters on infrastructure, admitted that even though she works in the field and understood a disaster like this could occur that, “this is just not in your head, it just seems impossible.”

“Heroic Efforts Not Enough”

The wounds from Hurricane Katrina are still fresh, but the hope is that cities, states, and the federal government will learn from the tragedy and become more vigilant in preparing for the next disaster. More than two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit, Jack Harrald, co-director of GW’s ICDRM and professor of engineering management, testified at a hearing of the US House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform about national emergency preparedness.

“In Louisiana and Mississippi, the heroic efforts of many men and women were not enough to compensate for the breakdown of our national response system,” Harrald told the committee. “If we ignore the systemic issues and simply replace people or re-assign responsibilities, we may simply fail again in the not too distant future with a different cast of characters.”

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