Disaster Response Update

This evening I find myself in a Best Western room in Chattanooga with only one roommate and WiFi. We got called off our project in Memphis yesterday to come work with the Red Cross in this devastated section of TN. We'll be working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week until May 15th. Our briefing is tomorrow morning, but it sounds like half of my team will be working out of the Red Cross staging area where ERV's (Emergency Response Vehicles) are being sent from while the other half does case work "in the field", which means going door to door (if that much of the house is still standing) and helping people get signed up for Red Cross benefits ie meals, shelter, etc. The death toll is pretty high here, and we've been told to prepare ourselves to speak with families who may have lost loved ones in the tornadoes, not to mention their homes and possessions.

I'm really glad we're here and that I'll get the opportunity to really help people who need it, but I'm also kind of terrified. Can I do this?

I don't think I wrote about this at the time, but when I was stationed in New Orleans, I was standing outside a house we were drywalling one morning, waiting for our site supervisor to bring the key to let us in. As I was pacing the yard anxious to start work, I heard the sickening sound of car crashing into a pole just two or three houses down. Two cars were actually involved, and a passenger from each care (both young women) were badly hurt. One had been seated in the back seat, and upon impact, the back window shattered and the woman literally bounced out of the car through the window and her body was hurled against the side of a brick house. The other woman, a teenage girl actually, had been tossed around the car like a ball in a pin ball machine, and was in a lot of pain.

Greg, one of the guys from our work site, immediately dashed over to the wrecked cars and took charge, checking to make sure the cars weren't going to explode and getting everyone away to a safe distance. He helped get the pinball girl out of the car without moving her around too much and laid her in the front yard, then he went to tend to the woman who had hit the house who we thought at first might be dead. Running over to see what I could do to help, I saw that the girl laying in the yard was alone in the chaos. When I knelt down next to her, she was shaking all over from shock, and crying from pain and fear. I didn't know what to do. Greg yelled to me to keep her neck still as it seemed very possible she had sustained neck injuries. I told the girl to stay still and I asked her her name. Through her tears she told me, though I can't remember it now. I stared at her and she stared at me, and all I could do was tell her over and over again that everything was going to be fine. I was scared. Her shaking was getting worse and all I had to offer her was the dirty hoodie I was wearing, embedded with layers of drywall dust. I covered her and told her the ambulance would be there soon and that everything would be okay. She kept crying, and I couldn't stop a few tears from falling down my own cheeks too, though I tried my best to keep them in check to show the girl that there was nothing to worry about.

Eventually the ambulance came and packed up the two girls. I have no idea what became of them.

I felt so many things in that half hour or so of sitting with that girl, holding her hand and wishing I had something clean to cover her with and keep her warm. Terror filled me, along with sadness, anxiety, anger, frustration, and a hundred other emotions all jumbled together. Is that what this will be like? How can you listen to someone's story who has lost everything and not fall to pieces? How can you be the strong one who looks them in the eye and says everything will be okay if you can't stop your own tears from falling?

Lord, give me strength!