Mass Care in Richwood, West Virginia

A frontal system got stuck over the hills of West Virginia the night of June 23, 2016 and caused historic flooding over the central and southern counties of the state. Twenty three people were killed, including a 2 year old who's lifeless body was found by search and rescue workers on the Greenbriar golf course. On June 24 the American Red Cross, in response to the flooding, deployed me from my home in northern Virginia to Charleston, West Virginia.

I worked on the response for 2 weeks. I spent almost half of that period in the little town of Richwood. I want to tell you a little about what happened to me there and, more importantly, what I took away.

The sign at the limits of the city of Richwood.

Dr. Bob Henry Baber was sworn in as the Mayor of Richwood five days after the storm. According to the business card he gave me, Bob Henry (as he likes to be called) is a "Poet, Novelist, Environmentalist, Speaker, Creative Writing Teacher and Mosaic Arts Instructor." He also told me that Richwood was a town of 2,000 souls in which 99% of the children were on free or reduced school lunch.

The flooding happened on a Thursday night and into Friday morning. I arrived in West Virginia that Friday night. When I reported to the Disaster Relief Operation (DRO) on Saturday morning the number of staff assigned to the operation had more than quadrupled from the day before. By Monday morning the staffing number had tripled again, and by Wednesday had doubled again. Ultimately, over 700 staff and volunteers were working on the operation. All of the volunteers came knowing that they would be sacrificing their 4th of July weekend.

Of the 1500 or so homes judged destroyed by the flooding, the most were in Kanawha County (598), followed by Greenbriar County (460). Nicholas County, in which Richwood resides, had the third highest total, 141. Through the misfortune of geography Richwood was more inaccessible than the affected towns in the other counties.The homes in Richwood were just as flooded. There just weren't as many of them, and the town wasn't as easy to get to.

On June 29th the DRO divided the response into 4 Districts and I was assigned as the Mass Care Lead for District 3. That day I drove from the DRO headquarters in Charleston to the District headquarters in Beckley, just south of the Fayette County line.

The division of the affected counties in West Virginia into Districts by the Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation.

The morning of Thursday, June 30th I rode north on US 19, a four lane divided highway that I came to know very well in the next week. Just south of Summersville we turned East on WV-39, a twisting, turning, harrowing, 8% downgrade that led to the Cherry River valley and the town of Richwood.

Viewed from a mountainside the Cherry River Valley and the town of Richwood are pretty. The damage is hidden.

At first glance flood damage is not as dramatic as that created by hurricane or tornado winds. With a few exceptions, like the mobile home in the picture below, the damage is hidden inside the structures. By looking at the high water marks and the topography of the valley I could tell that much of the city had been affected.

A mobile home washed against a bridge over the Cherry River in Richwood, WV.

After the flood waters receded the people of Richwood were inundated with a second flood: donations and volunteers. Different people and organizations stepped up to the task of receiving, sorting and distributing the thousands of items brought in on trucks, trailers and automobiles. The Moose Lodge, across from City Hall, and the 1st Baptist Church on Walnut St. were two such locations that I visited. The largest repository was the High School Gymnasium, a red building down by the river.

Donated goods at the high school gymnasium in Richwood, WV.

The Moose Lodge, untouched by the flooding, was a central location for feeding and donated goods and we initially established a fixed site for feeding there. Access to food was an issue in Richwood since they had no grocery store and the only restaurant I could find was a Dairy Queen, a few blocks from the Moose Lodge where I stopped when I wanted coffee.

Food pantries, supported by food banks, have the traditional role of feeding the hungry in blue-sky days. The food pantry in Richwood was by the river and was innundated by the flood. I worked with the food pantry and the food bank people to start the road to re-establishing this service. The Baptist kitchens and the Red Cross ERVs couldn't be there forever. In order to transition to long-term feeding we had to get the food pantry back in operation. I was able to start this transition process before I left.

Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicles feeding at the Moose Lodge in Richwood, WV.

A Type 1 Field Kitchen from the North Carolina Baptist Convention was assigned to support District 3 and operated at the Restoration Fellowship Baptist Church in Mt. Nebo, just off US 19 south of Summersville. I ate a lot of meals from that kitchen. The meals prepared by the kitchen were delivered into the 4 counties of the District by Red Cross ERV's. The meals are kept hot by insulated food containers called Cambros. You can see the Red Cambros stacked on pallets in the picture below.

Positioning loads for Red Cross ERVs at Kitchen #3, operated by the North Carolina Baptists, in Mt. Nebo, WV. 

We were fortunate to have a Team of Americorps Volunteers assigned to support us in Richwood. Many of the inhabitants of the city were elderly and didn't have vehicles. The Americorps Volunteers delivered meals from the ERVs to them. With the aid of a Red Cross truck and a supervisor, the Americorps Volunteers also loaded donated supplies from the gymnasium and delivered them into the community.

Mayor Baber was undaunted by the challenges his community faced and even thought that the disaster could be an impetus for change. The last time that I saw him, just before I left West Virginia, I told the Mayor about Pearlington, MS. I told him how Pearlington had been devastated by the passing of the eye of Hurricane Katrina over the town in 2005. I told him how the many people who came to Pearlington to help had left with a tiny piece of the city in their hearts.

Home in Pearlington, MS destroyed by Hurricane Katrina's wind, rain and surge.

Someone set up a website dedicated to the recovery of Pearlington and the people who had responded. On the first annual anniversary of the storm the city inhabitants had a celebration with a Low Country Boil of shrimp, crab, potatoes and corn-on-the-cob. Through the website they invited all the responders and I came.

I told the Mayor that Richwood should do the same thing. Have a celebration a year later and invite everyone who had helped. When I spoke those words I'm not sure that Bob Henry, a far-sighted a man as I think he was, was able to see that far into the future.

He did give me his email and maybe next year, when the months have healed some of the damage of that night, I might remind him. I'm not the only one who left West Virginia with a piece of Richwood in my heart.

The Red Cross and historic flooding in Colorado

On Tuesday night, September 17 I was sitting at home watching the Braves lose another game to the Nats when I got a phone call from a local emergency manager in Colorado. He got my phone number from a friend of a friend and wanted to "pick my brain" about the long term shelter problem he was facing.

For Colorado, the Big One had finally arrived. And for the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Baptists, and the state/local emergency managers involved in mass care in the state this is the Big Test. Are they prepared? Did all that time they spent writing plans, teaching classes, and conducting exercises build the required level of capability in Mass Care Services required?

Based on media reports and my discussions with friends responding to the disaster the answer is Yes. Has everything gone perfectly? Good Lord, if that's your standard then you'll never be happy. It's a disaster. If everything was all right then we wouldn't have a job as emergency managers. The problem we always face is that when the disaster strikes the citizens have never read our perfectly drafted plans. They don't obey our carefully crafted public messages. They insist on acting in what they perceive to be their best interests at the time.

Imagine.

The first rule of emergency management is that the citizens will do whatever they want, regardless of what they've been advised. The second rule is that no matter what we do, it won't be enough - especially when it comes to mass care. So if you're in the job accept these rules, move on and do the best you can to help the most.

The Big News in this disaster has come from the Red Cross. For the first time in my knowledge the Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation is organizing according to the Incident Command System (ICS) and issuing daily Incident Action Plans (IAP). For me, this is great news and long overdue.

There has been a lot of discussion (at least, if you hang out with the people I do) about the re-engineering the Red Cross has undergone and is still undergoing. Change is painful and controversial. I was not privy to the reasons for the current re-engineering and no one is in a position now to know how successful it will be.

I have discovered (to my dismay) that there are some people who devote an inordinate amount of time criticizing the Red Cross. The Red Cross is a big organization that plays an important role in disaster responses of all size in every corner of our nation.  Public institutions in our society must expect to be criticized and such criticisms are often required to drive needed changes. An institution like the Red Cross, which survives primarily on public donations, is especially sensitive to public criticisms.

Yet most of the criticisms of the Red Cross that I hear are motivated more by destruction than a desire for change. Unfortunately, this is common in much of our social discourse these days. In my view, the critics have an unreasonable expectation of the capabilities of the Red Cross and, in some cases, an unreasoning sense of entitlement. Both of these problems apply to the Staten Island politician who, in the days after Sandy struck, publicly denounced the performance of the Red Cross only to discover that no, no, the Red Cross doesn't perform search and rescue operations in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.

We need the Red Cross. We need the idea of the Red Cross - the idea that we can respond to disasters with volunteers and donations. We can get mad at people in the Red Cross. The people who are human and make mistakes and do stupid things. But we can't confuse the people in the Red Cross with the idea of the Red Cross. We need the idea of the Red Cross. The people will come and go. We need the idea to live on.