Responding to Hurricane Katrina

Update: September 29

SPU Graduate Nursing Student Featured in Everett Herald

Colette Dahl, a graduate student in SPU's master of science in nursing program, was featured in the Everett Herald on September 11. Colette, a registered nurse in the Granite Fall School District in Washington state, went to Alabama in response to Hurricane Katrina. She joined a team of SPU students and staff who also traveled to the region. To read the article about her preparations for the work, click here.

Update: September 16

SPU Team Finishes Grueling Week, Returns to Seattle

The following is an overview of the final week that SPU Health Services nurse practitioner, Lu Joslin, and graduate nursing students Linda Robinson, Kristen Jones, Colette Dahl spent in the hurricane-affected region, serving with the Red Cross.

Lu Joslin and Linda Robinson were to the east of Biloxi as of Tuesday, September 13. They were traveling from shelter to shelter, offering assistance for tasks the overwhelmed staff at each site.

Robinson’s husband, Mitch, relayed an incident that occurred on Wednesday, September 14, in which Joslin and Linda Robinson tried to bring calm to a conflict that they came upon in one neighborhood. Residents of one town were instructed to move debris from their destroyed homes toward the curb so that city or contract crews could load it up and haul it away. Joslin and Robinson arrived in the area as one distraught homeowner was confronting a crew who were about to clear her yard. She insisted that her life’s possessions were among the debris and she was not about to give it up yet! “I just found my daughter’s first Rosary!” she repeated over and over. Wrote Mitch Robinson, “My understanding is that Lu and Linda negotiated with her and promised to get her some help recovering anything she wanted to save, and held off the clean-up crew for 24 hours! All in a day’s nursing!” As the area is being reopened to residents, Joslin and Robinson are also treating nail puncture wounds, glass cuts, and other injuries associated with cleaning up such a mess.

Joslin and Robinson reached Colette Dahl on Wednesday, who reported that she and a doctor were treating and observing much more acute cases. It has been several days since they heard from Kristen.

Thursday, September 15, was the last full day of disaster relief for Joslin and Robinson. Last night they completed the paperwork to "out-process" and leave this work for others who are arriving to begin their tour. On Friday, they travel to Montgomery, and they return to Seattle on Saturday morning.

During the week these two nurses from Seattle Pacific dealt with an estimated 500 people. Their encounters ranged from giving someone a phone number in a parking lot for a food bank, to shipping someone to a hospital because he or she needed a higher level of care.

Robinson added that she was so grateful for the chance to see this operation up close. Her husband, however, added:

“Today she had a little ‘downer’ herself as she began to deal with the enormity of the task that confronts all these people. She tells of the churches from up North that have filled their church vans with volunteers, and have come South to simply help people sort through the remains of their lives and help them clear debris to the curb for pick-up. And the ‘church ladies’ who can't do enough to make you feel welcome and cared for.

“Lu and Linda asked me to urge each of you to research on the Web and consider a need there and going to that region to help — ‘The laborers are few and the harvest is great.’ Habitat for Humanity will have a great presence there sometime in the future. Consider helping in this way. Or just find a church or Lions Club or some other outlet to contact there and determine how you can help. Or contact Red Cross and see if they can use you.”

Update: September 14, 2005

John Perkins Sends Thanks to Seattle Pacific Community

I want to personally extend a fervent thanks to you and to all of those who were involved in providing the gift to help us during this crisis. I cannot express how much this will further the work we are trying to accomplish at this time. We are deeply touched by your thoughtfulness and generosity.

Currently, we are working in a few different venues. First, we are laboring intensely to find housing for the displaced people that are presently here in Jackson. This is going very well. I am excited about how the community is pulling together and how God is opening doors to find homes for those in need.

Secondly, by the end of the week, all of the evacuees will be out of the large-scale makeshift shelter at the Coliseum and into smaller church shelters throughout the city. We are helping supply both goods and small grants to these churches to help them provide and care for families, many of whom are large extended families.

Here at the Center, we have just placed a family of six in one of our houses. We have worked diligently to make repairs and restore some of our homes to working order. At present, we are working on two other houses we would like to remodel and have ready for additional families. Altogether, we will have five houses available for these families in distress.

Thirdly, we are placing families in nearby apartments. The Red Cross and FEMA are helping to pay the first month’s rent for these apartments until each family can begin to recover from this disaster. When our houses are finished, we will be moving some of the people from these apartments into their own homes. Our hope is that they will stay long term and work to rejuvenate Jackson’s economy.

This week we are very pleased to have fifty-five workers here at the Center working on four houses, two that should be ready for occupants by the end of the week. Your gift, among others, is making this work possible, and we thank you so very much for this opportunity. The project we are working on at this time is a long-term development, and we want to be involved for the long haul. Gifts like yours enable us to do just that. I look forward to a team joining us in the spring to aid in our ongoing house remodeling. Thank you so much for your help and for all that you have provided, and I hope to hear from you again soon.

You brother in Christ,

John Perkins

President

John M. Perkins Foundation

Update: September 13, 2005

SPU Health Services nurse practitioner, Lu Joslin, and graduate nursing students Linda Robinson, Kristen Jones, Colette Dahl are still in the hurricane-affected region, serving with the Red Cross. Joslin and Robinson are in Pascagoula, Mississippi, assisting at a shelter/clinic. Jones is also in Pascagoula, serving at another shelter where she had been issuing Red Cross vouchers and assessing people’s needs. Dahl is with a medical team and working with a doctor. They are traveling between shelters to provide an extra set of hands and assess cases that merit a higher level of care.

A nurse practitioner, Joslin can make decisions about evacuating people to a place where they can get a higher level of help; Robinson is assessing other evacuees to determine nursing/medical needs, and listening to their stories. Writes Robinson’s husband, Mitch, “There is great therapy in the act of listening. [Linda] heard one man's story about evacuating his family to the North and then returning to protect his home from looters. After two days of rising water at his home, he decided it was time to leave.  He walked for a day, and in the evening he found a mattress in a tree, retrieved it, and spent two days camping on the mattress, and then moved on until he found a shelter.  He was a skilled flooring installer, but he lost all his tools ‘in the Gulf.’ (At this point Linda realized that her part as a nurse was largely therapeutic; these people need to tell their story. Others, witnessing this scene, want to tell their story, as well.)”

As of Monday, September 12, M.S.N. Program Director Liz Torrence had left Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and returned to Seattle. Updates from Dr. Torrence will be posted when available. Nursing graduate student Darrell Owens had also in Baton Rouge. He is now home, as well, and back at Harborview Medical Center.

Message From SPU’s M.S.N. Program Director Liz Torrence, an Early Volunteer to Baton Rouge, Louisiana
9/9/05 Hello everyone, In his letter, President Eaton quoted the Nehemiah verse from John Perkins' letter: "... Let us rise up and build. Then they set their hands to this good work.” Indeed, this is what we are needed for. The emergent events are forthcoming, but the long term building is enormous. I am staying with four friends from New Orleans who do not have homes. Most of their families also have lost their homes throughout Louisiana and Mississippi. My husband will follow my trip to help with clean-up when folks can re-enter some of these areas. Currently clean-up is beginning. Until they are able to complete the search and rescue as well as recover those victims who have died in this holocaust, the focus of clean-up and rebuilding will not be 150 percent. I believe Dr. Eaton's focus on Winter Quarter for sending teams from our campus to help rebuild is a wonderful idea and needed response.

Pray for wisdom for those involved in this effort and patience for those experiencing all of the changes, even those unscathed directly by Katrina. Here in Baton Rouge the traffic is gridlock, and those living in the city are not accustomed to this. Most are gracious, but in the heat and thick of things, patience is needed.