The Long Road to Recovery

Surviving the hurricane is a simple feat compared to all the challenges that come after the storm. The days immediately following Ike were exciting. It was a break from work, an opportunity to meet our neighbors and share hurricane stories, and a fun test in simple living. After a week, though, the excitement wears off and people become impatient, hoping that normal life will resume at any moment. After two weeks there is frustration, hopelessness, and the harsh reality that “normal” may take a while to achieve.

I’m relieved to say that after 13 long, hot, and frustrating days I finally have power back at my house. I felt like the last person to get power, but still half the city is without power. With things returning to normal at home, things at work got out of control. The hurricane caused Catholic Charities to flood, so I was out of work for a week waiting for the power to come back on and water to drain. When I did return to work, the carpet and baseboards were ripped out and plastic bags covered they sticky floor. Everything reeked of mold and some furniture had been ruined. My office, though, was miraculously the only office on the first floor that wasn’t damaged. At least I was back at work and could begin to get my routine back. Well, that was until Catholic Charities caught on fire. Our second day back at work and a transformer behind the building exploded and caught part of the building on fire. Firemen came to put out the fire and the electric company, already busy working to return power to the city, said it would take 2 weeks to fix. So again I am out of work, until we can find a generator large enough to power the whole building.

So as not to sit around the house all day with nothing to do, I decided to volunteer at the Red Cross food distribution centers in Galveston and Baycliff. I can’t say that I saw all the destruction from Hurricane Ike because the areas, like Galveston, that were affected the most are off limits. So the distribution centers were right outside of these areas. As people drove through to pick up water, ice, MREs (meals ready to eat), cleaning kits, and baby diapers I realized how many people were affected by this storm. You hear numbers in the news, but they don’t mean anything until you see the lines of cars and meet the actual people. The people driving though the lines had lost everything. The trunks of their cars were filled with whatever items they could salvage from their homes- lamps, tables, front doors. Anything that was a piece of their past. The MREs I loaded into the cars would only feed a family for a day and they would have to come back tomorrow and wait in line again just to eat. So many people came through that we ran out of food and supplies and those people drove away with nothing. It was very sad, but we had nothing to offer.

Last night, I attended an AIDS benefit concert with my housemates. At the concert one of the event planners stood up to welcome everyone and commented on how great it was to have so many support the cause. “In times of disaster, it’s the most vulnerable in our community that are affected the most,” she said. I didn’t need her to tell me this; I’ve experienced it myself.

After the hurricane, people in the suburbs and wealthy areas of town had power within one or two days. Centerpoint, the energy company, put out a priority list of zip codes and the order they would restore power. All the zip codes of lower income neighborhoods were last on the list. Since my housemates and I live in a poorer section on town we experienced first hand the frustration of waiting for power. We don’t have much as JVs, so we also felt the pain of losing all the contents of our refrigerator and the challenges of getting to work without a car and a bus system that wasn’t fully up and running. But despite all this, we were still in a better position than our neighbors. We have outside resources that helped us survive the storm and live out the aftermath more comfortably. JVC staff gave us extra money to replenish our refrigerator. People from our agencies gave us rides to work and opened their homes to us so we could sleep in an air-conditioned room. We always had people looking out for us, but who was looking out for our neighbors? They don’t have much to begin with and then the hurricane took away whatever they had left. I went to the library the other day and it was filled with people trying to fill out the FEMA applications for help. FEMA, though, is only giving out loans and the money will have to be paid back- something that will be difficult for the people who have lost everything, including their jobs. My housemates and I have reached out the best we could to our neighbors, but there are thousands of people all over Houston in similar situations.

After a natural disaster, the country comes together and sends all types of help and support, but after a few weeks the disaster is old news and people consider the problem fixed. Whether Houston is in the news or not, things are not back to normal and they won’t be for a while. Sure, big businesses are back up and running, but the most vulnerable in our community are still struggling and will be for a long time. Stuff like this doesn’t just affect you for a week. It’s not a simple fix like turning the power back on.

Paz,
Stephanie