Professor aids victims of Katrina
USU assistant English professor Kelli Cargile Cook and her husband spent a weekend volunteering at Camp Williams hoping to spread good will and provide service to hurricane evacuees displaced from their homes.
Cook and her husband arrived at the camp at 6:15 p.m. on Sept. 3, ready to aid the survivors in finding food, shelter and mental health care.
“The first bus arrived carrying the largest group of evacuees holding garbage bags filled with their personal belongings,” Cook said. The evacuees then sorted themselves into groups and those with injuries were taken to receive medical attention. With time, “they began to tell their stories,” she said.
The survivors revealed how they were relieved after the storm stopped on Tuesday, Cook said, but that relief soon turned into a nightmare as floods rose at unstoppable speeds and levees broke.
“Most of the adults we talked to described how they had rescued their families and others from rising waters,” Cook said. “Everyone was traveling in pairs, some of them strangers until the flood brought them together as brothers and sisters.”
Cook said most of the evacuees had been rescued by boats and helicopters and dropped at higher ground, instructed to walk to the convention center. Instead of finding food, water and rescue, evacuees suffered in heat and human waste without access to showers or bathroom facilities from Tuesday to Friday.
The survivors were then loaded onto airplanes on Saturday and told they were going to Houston, and then later told their final destination would be Salt Lake City.
“We met evacuees from three planes,” Cook said. “We processed over 250 people and saw them safely to bunk beds in the army barracks.”
“One elderly man thanked us again and again for our help, but also warned us repeatedly not to sit too close to him because he hadn’t bathed in days,” recalled Cook. “Another little girl talked to me incessantly about her brother. When I asked her if the 2 year old playing with us was her brother, she said no, and that her brother was in the river. I couldn’t ask for more details.”
Cook and her husband left the camp early the next morning, never to forget their experiences, she said.
“As I think back on that night, I know that these are not people who are very different from us,” she said. “They are not refugees, they are Americans and they want to go back home.”
Cook urged Americans to “send positive energy and prayers” to those left behind in the tragedy. “This is not a time for politics or for spin. This is a time to relieve pain and suffering and to witness the strength of the human spirit.”
-jlheywood@cc.usu.edu