Nocturne

Southwest Louisiana Volunteer Housing
Lake Charles, LA

The arrival of Hurricane Ike at our former housing in Baton Rouge was anti-climactic; it was windy and it rained a bit, but the conditions never worsened beyond those of a thunderstorm. In other parts of the Gulf, however, the damage was incredible. Galveston is most likely going to be uninhabitable for more than a year, Beaumont has suffered a lot of damage, and Houston has a long way to go before it recovers.

Our team is currently running a shelter out of the First Baptist Church in Westlake, LA. The church is the third incarnation of the shelter; it began in a small elementary school cafeteria, then moved to the Martin Luther King Community Center before being transferred to the church. For the first time since we arrived, things have begun to calm down. There are about 170 clients living in our shelter, and the local headquarters has done a decent job of supplying us with things that we need. I have been assigned as the night shift shelter supervisor, which means I'm responsible for the overall operation of the shelter between 8 PM and 8 AM. I work with three other people from my team, as well as two Red Cross staff nurses and several National Guardsmen from the local armory for security. Thus, I am essentially nocturnal now; once I get off shift at 8 in the morning, I tend to take a shower and fall into bed...only to get up around 7 PM and prepare to do it all again. In general, it has gone well...however, like any undertaking of this magnitude, there have been some problems. So, without further ado...

It began with the takeover of the delivery women. After our move to the MLK center, it was determined that the overall shelter manager would be my team leader, who both myself and the day supervisor would report to. Several hours into the first day shift, two women from headquarters arrived at the shelter, ostensibly to drop off paperwork and supplies. By the time I came in for the night shift, they had taken over...led by what I can only describe as an extremely masculine and pushy woman bedecked in Harley-Davidson apparel. She proclaimed herself to be the shelter manager, and appointed her "co-worker" as the second in command. This in itself did not irk me as much as did the immediate realization that neither of these bitches had the slightest idea what they were doing. Needless to say, within a day the Harley woman had been kicked out...but not without leaving quite a mess for us to clean up.

Some of the other interesting events thus far: the arrival of a bus with 50 people seeking shelter at 1 AM, when everyone else was sleeping...our constant dealings with a larcenous old man who stole a coffee pot, a pocketknife, and Christ knows what else...the drama between a drug-addicted mother, the abusive and mentally challenged grandmother, and the two little kids that ended up with Child Protective Services coming out...the revelation that we had a woman with a warrant out for her arrest and her child-molester husband in the shelter...and that was in the span of about four days. Wonder what will happen tonight...