Now that some are rescued...continued chaos

[LadyShea]

I responded to lunachick in another thread regarding calling agencies that are supposed to be helping in the relief effort.

luna, the Red Cross has no idea what the hell they are doing, are overwhelmed, or their normal organization has broken down because they've been forced to work with "faith based" relief by FEMA. When we called them they had no idea where to send us or what we could do. They had a list of nearby shelters that was completely incorrect and sent us running off to an empty, locked church. Finally they said "We don't know. Send money". We found the shelter on our own. I thought I would find order....I found chaos.

I was handed a baby and she was siezing in my arms...nobody at the shelter knew who the mother was, and hadn't seen this baby before. There was no ID on children, they were running wild and the parents nowhere to be found. Not one item at that shelter was bought with the millions they have collected...every stitch of clothing, bar of soap, and morsel of food was donated by locals like me and sorted/distributed through Catholic Charities. I had to give them a fax machine because they didn't have one. My dad was calling Office Depot to try to get a copier for health questionaires and was told "We donated a million dollars to Red Cross already"...the shelter didn't have copiers or phones or laptops or any other basic equipment. Registration forms, to enter the information on the databases for the Red Cross, were being filled out on cards, and ended up in piles in several different places.

When I asked any question about where I could be the most help I was met with "I don't know". Two nurses had driven down from Tuscaloosa and first went to Mobile, only to be put to work on regular hospital rounds. They also found the shelter on their own, and were sitting around with no direction. Someone came up with the idea of taking health questions on everyone in the shelter- 3 days later and only after the baby started siezing- but there was no copier as I mentioned. The Red Cross people were using ripped out pages of spiral notebooks to write down important information like people looking for families, bra sizes needed for the women, etc. The woman buying bras is using her own money....the Red Cross didn't offer any.

Churches and other orgs brought dinners, and sent pizza, and chicken dinners came from somewhere. There was so much food and nowhere to store it, so much of it ended up in the garbage.

People were sleeping on donated used matteresses and getting lice....they should be on sanitary cots. Where are the cots? What is the money being spent on?