#13 The Bellemont Hotel

So we sat, and we sat, and we sat. Our go-get-em supervisor "Carrie",
was proving to be a royal pain in the butt. She scheduled a meeting
for 8 am, so we were all there. Noooooo, it didn't happen. nor did it
happen at 9, 10 or 11. She is one of those types who has to do every
teeny tiny thing herself. Super bottle neck creator. Lousy manager.
Still, she smiled and rah rahed until she had lost her voice.

HQ has a decidedly rah rah atmosphere. When volunteers are given
their assignment, at the end of yet another useless orientation, the
remaining group cheers. Some wear Mardi Gras beads. It has taken on
the feel of a summer camp. Pretty juvenile. Pretty offensive and
unprofessional. Glad the clients can't see us.

Everyone but me and a few die hards are decked out in their
ever so enormous Red Cross vests and smocks. Damn they are ugly. I
think the designer was trying to channel Shamu. Either that, or they
wanted the thing to double as a big stiff ugly cape in a bullfight.
Its that miserably unattractive and nonfunctional. There we were.
All dressed up, and no where to go. A distinct but growing sense of
mismanagement and poor planning start to creep into my brain. I'm not
the only one. Some have been keeping the seats warm in this burg for
five days. Those volunteers subjected to that particular stupidity
wore the abuse of their time like a crown of thorns. It was getting old.

Third day, half way through it, and they have finally decided to
send me to Kenner Louisiana tomorrow, where they are opening a large
service site. We are about to go "home", back to the shelter, when an
emergency call comes in. Everything is an emergency here. The whole
place seems continually amok with people who's' heads are imminently
planning to explode over something that ought to be trivial. Our
department in particular seems almost completely infected by this
particular form of mental illness. If other people's lives didn't
depend on us here at HQ, it would almost be comical. However, just
then, it was not.

A local site, the newly opened Bellemont Hotel, has put in a call for
case workers as they are overwhelmed with the crush of evacuees who
showed up to apply for the money loaded credit cards that the Red
Cross is giving out. It turns out that this time it really was an
emergency. They didn't tell us, but the rumor was, that its pretty
nasty over there. They weren't kidding. We separate into groups to
carpool over. Six of us in a van. I am with 4 older white women from
places like Ohio and Wisconsin, and one thirty something black man
from Philly. We drove off from headquarters, chatting and a little
uneasy. As we got to the site, uneasy turned to a little panicky.
Panicky turned soon to outright scared.

The Bellemont was once a huge Hotel. Built sometime in the
sixties from what it appears, it has turned to a mildly genteel
decay. Placed for some reason right by a freeway overpass, the grand
entrance is fronted by antebellum style columns. The rest of the
hotel stretches two full blocks in length, and one full block in
depth. It is a mastodon of a hotel.

As we came upon it, none of us was prepared for what we saw.
Thousands upon thousands of people. Most of them angry and frustrated
standing in the hot Baton Rouge sun. Pushing and shoving, they ran in
a line along the entire length of the hotel, wrapping around it and
traveling the entire length of the back side, and then some. We could
see some few police, but not nearly enough. Everyone in the line was
black. Five of the six of us looked like a bunch of cats in a sea of
hungry tigers. It was not good.

All of the women in our car were nervous. The lone black man in the
car was over us and our attitude in about a minute. He sat back
disgusted. We wound around a corner, past the barricades of police,
flashing our red cross badges as we went. As we pulled up, it was
agreed that since I was riding shotgun....so to speak.....I was to go
out alone, get through to the hotel, and bring back an armed police
officer to accompany us inside. Who's idea was that? Mine
probably...lol.

I figured that I was probably overreacting, so I jumped out and
trotted to the front of the building. The police were standing with
bull horns, shouting at the mob gathered at the front of the
building. Many people were pointing their fingers, shaking their
fists and screaming. They were screaming at the cops, they were
screaming at each other. They were mad as hell. Of course, there I
was, white in miniature, sporting my big red mumu Red Cross vest,
wading right into the middle of the almost out of control mob, trying
like hell to push past and get in the door. I thought to myself,
"self, if you hesitate for a minute, you are screwed". To my
surprise, even though I was bracing for it, no one yelled at me at
all. Most barely even noticed me. They were too busy screaming at the
cops.To my unending chagrin and profound relief, the, "mob",
actually made way for me to get by.

Spotting a police officer just past the door, I grabbed him, telling
him that he needed to come back to the car with me to get the others.
He followed me out yelling as he went, hand on his gun. We got to the
car, the others poured onto the lawn, and away we went. Past the mob,
through the door into the lobby. Yikes! We could still hear and see
the crowd just beyond the glass doors. It was not pretty at all.


Apparently, the site had started up early that morning. Our site
supervisors "Simon", and his wife "Lois", were very nice people. They
had arrived on site, expecting it to have been set up for them.
Instead what they found was near riot conditions to begin with. The
site had not been provided with water. Not for staff, not for the
clients wilting fast in the hot hot sun. Nor had the site been
stocked with food, medical attendants or supplies, mental health
personnel, or a manual on how to go about processing the population
of a small town.

There were 5 port-a-potties that were already full. Astoundingly
inadequate for a mob of 6000. there were no facilities at all for the
disabled. No wheelchairs no toilets . no chairs to sit down on, no
shade. "Simon" and "Lois" had not been trained for this kind of
circus. None of us had been. "Simon" and "Lois" didn't know it yet,
but they had been hung out to dry by our department, Client Services.
While you are thinking about it, remember to add that phrase to
"jumbo shrimp", "Army intelligence", and "disaster relief" for that
matter, to your list of oxymorons. Unfortunately, ours was not the
only horror story caused directly by these fools. It was just the one
that made the news for the next few days.

The set up in the grand ballroom consisted of about 40 6'
tables, set up in rows. One caseworker to a table, 6 clients to a
table with 6 processing forms. We were to fill out the top of the
form with RC info, the clients would fill out the rest, or we would
fill out the rest, Or we and the clients would fill out the rest, or
kangaroos would arrive to take over the filling out of the forms, and
we could all go home.

Ok...We did get it better than that, but not
much. Remember, I had an advantage over most, as I had been doing
intake in Los Angeles for the past several weeks. I was supposed to
be one of the supervisors on my next assignment, and originally at
this one, but they needed every body at a table, so I was at least
for the moment, a caseworker. That was fine with me. Less to think
about.

The head of Operations was someone I at first named the Red
Hornet, due to her penchant to overreact and then make a beeline for
whatever or whomever it was that had pissed her off. I later came to
respect her as being pretty fair and balanced overall, even if she
did lean somewhat towards blind belief in her managerial staff, when
all available indicators pointed to their complete and utter
incompetence.

She announced to the volunteers that because of the
situation outside, we would have no lunch, and no breaks. I could see
her point. Besides which, we didn't have any food on site for the
staff anyway. Nice set up. If The Red Hornet was supposed to be the
calvary in this fiasco, she definitely needed more horses more men
and more guns. It was a train wreck.

Her second in command was this absolute idiot. Baby Huey in a
button down shirt. To quote the three stooges, " What a maroon". He
apparently had been trained in the Chicken Little style of
management, running around like the twit that he was, telling the
Site manager that HE was an idiot. Telling the Site Manager that
anything the manager had implemented was shit, and they were gonna do
it his way now. Running from volunteer to volunteer, pointing and
snapping at them. Trying not to miss anyone he could possibly offend.

At one point, as I walked towards him to ask a question, he pointed
at me, snapped his fingers and snarled, " You! Get back to your table!! Now!!!" I
stopped, looked at him, people going every which way around us, and
with my hand on my hip, leaned in and said, "Do I look like your schnauzer?" As I
turned my back on the SOB, I saw it was going to be a very long day.
I was later to suggest to his superior, that in the future, he not be
allowed near actual human beings, but for now, time to go with the flow.

I sat down, at my table, and began to help my clients fill out
forms. After about fifteen minutes, "Lois" approached me with another
caseworker and asked if I could help her out with a "situation". The
other caseworker took my place, and "Lois" led me over to the table
with the problem and left me there. It would be the last time I saw
that table, or acted as a caseworker. Not my doing. Not my choice.

As I sat down, the caseworker at the table filled me in. One of her
clients had just come in. The client was an epileptic. An epileptic
who had just had a seizure. An epileptic who had just had a seizure,
had some form of mental illness, a drug and alcohol problem, had no
ID, could barely speak, didn't know her name, and had been dropped
off at the site by someone else. She couldn't remember her rides'
name either. The caseworker asked me what she should do. This would
be my easiest problem of my time at the Bellemont.

I told the caseworker to bring the woman to the only paramedic that
we had, and let him deal with her.

From there it was nuts. I spent my day with the other three or
four supervisors, running from table to table,running all over the
building in fact, putting out "fires", helping to fill out forms,
answering questions. Nothing was going as it ought to. Forms were
incorrect, ID's were incorrect. People were angry and frustrated. We
tried our best to be patient. we tried our best to do it right.

At one table a woman started shouting at me and the caseworker,
" You just don't know what it's like! You don't understand" The whole
table was getting agitated, and I could see that tables nearby were
listening . I turned to the women at the table and said, "Have you
been watching the TV at all?" They looked at me like I was crazy.
They said yes, and asked what the hell that had to do with anything?

I asked them if they had seen the fires in Southern California?They
answered in the affirmative. I told them that those fires were right
by my house, and in between running around trying to help them, I had
been on the phone with my 19 year old son making an evacuation plan
for my home. They looked at me and didn't say a word for a moment.
One of them told me that she was sorry. The table went quietly back
to filling out forms.

I forgot to tell you all that part until just now. The fires in California
were raging. I didn't know yet if I would lose my house, and I was in
this insane asylum in Louisiana, called the Bellemont Hotel. Good thing that I had
something to do other than think. It would have been worse.


Later in the day, "Simon", sent me with his car back to HQ, to see
about getting some water for the site. I assumed that he had filed
out what is called a "greenie", A requisition form, and it hadn't
been filled.

When I arrived at HQ, I went to the first supervisor in
the chain of command, "Carrie". She smiled as usual, said that she
had too much to do, and sent me to the next rung up the rickety
ladder, "Ronnie". "Ronnie". What can I say about "Ronnie"? Nothing
good, that's for sure. "Ronnie" was misplaced. She not only came from
the Chicken-Littlle-Head-Exploding school of management, I suspect
that she originated it.

There was nothing that "Ronnie" couldn't get completely wound up
about. There was also nothing that she would ever did to lift a
finger. The level of incompetence that "Ronnie" achieved on a daily
basis, was only surpassed by her superior "Deliah", and echoed by the
short old chunky red headed viper in the group, "Jan".

I had heard repeated horror stories about, "Jan". That people had quit disasters,
(quit disasters...now doesn't that sound odd? But that is the
terminology here), and gone home because of her viciousness. I
thought they were exaggerating. I was wrong.

I Tried to speak to all of them one by one. One by one, they told me that I didn't know what
I was talking about, that there was plenty of water and food. The
Port-a-potties were more than sufficient to handle the crowd, and
what was I doing over there anyway? I felt as though I had entered
the Twilight Zone.

I took out my phone, and asked them one by one to please call my
Site Manager. That he had sent me over to them for help, and that we
had nothing at the site but 50 or so workers, a couple of cops some
"hot cards", (cards loaded with RC money), and 7000+ angry hot
clients.

I told them that we needed help. I told them that clients
were keeling over from the heat, and that we had no water to give
them. They told me that I misunderstood the situation. They told me
that water and food were on site. They told me told me to go
somewhere else.

I went somewhere else. I went to Health Services. There, they at
least seemed concerned. I spoke to the Head there, and she agreed to
some diaper changing stations, as no one can prepare for a nine hour
wait without having been given some prior information. Needless to
say, the Red Cross was not forthcoming with any information of that
type. Bad for publicity.

I thought it might be worse for publicity,
if someone keeled over and died there, but that's just me. The Health services person
suggested that I go and speak to Feeding to address the food and
water issue. Feeding. That at least made sense.

At Feeding, I spoke to one of the desk workers. I apprised them of
the situation, told them that my Site Manager had sent me over, and
asked them to call and confirm. They took my word for the condition
of the site. Another worker, overhearing our conversation remarked
that there was already an invoice out for Bellemont. I asked to see
it. You guessed it, he couldn't find it. The first guy put through
the order.

Returned to Feeding, about fifteen minutes later, to confirm the
shipment tomorrow of one pallet of water, and one pallet of snacks. A
supervisor in the area started to question why I was there. She was a
piece of work. Her exact words were:, "Who the hell are you?" I again
recounted my purpose, and again called my Site Manager for
confirmation.

She told me to put the phone away, and, "get the hell
out of her area". She then pointed at each of her workers and said,
"don't any of you give her food or water. its not our job". I
remembered her name. Later when the psycho supervisor wasn't around,
I snuck back. The first guy promised to get the food and water over
to my site, first thing the next day. What a relief.

I got back to the Bellemont just as things were winding down.
Everyone was exhausted. Several had decided to leave the site.
Several transferred into other areas, other sites, other departments.
Who could blame them? I gave the Site Managers my report on what had
happened. They had a hard time believing the total lack of support
they were receiving from their own department, in a fiasco created by
that department. While I was at HQ, they had called and gotten the
same response.

My coworkers were great. They gave me hugs and patted me on the
back. For a brief second, I felt like I had actually acomplished
something here. then I remembered the four to six thousand clients
that would arrive tomorrow. Like today, they would be left in the
lurch. Uninformed, waiting for hour after hour in the hot sun to get
a chance at some money.

We would botch their applications, and leave
them in a horrible line all day in the sun. Most would get their Red
Cross Credit card. Some would be turned away with explanations that
seemed arbitrary, as the reasons for denial changed from hour to hour, day to day.

The National Guard arrived just as we were leaving, fully armed
with M-16's. They made it look as though we had gone to war. It felt
as if it was a war. The volunteers and the people against
bureaucratic ineptitude. Bureaucratic ineptitude was winning so far,
but we were still up and fighting to do the right thing by our
clients.

The only comment that anyone from the Red Cross Volunteers
made as the arriving military slowly ambled past us, was that it didn't look
like there would be nearly enough of them.



Take care. Count your blessings,

Lisa