Lessons from a Hurricane
By Dee Miller, Psychosocial Nurse and Writer,
Council Bluffs, Iowa
As I watched the bumper-to-bumper traffic streaming out of the city of New Orleans just two weeks ago, my identification with the occupants of those vehicles was incredibly strong! I knew that scene well. I understand being vulnerable in a hurricane differently than most people who watched the story unfold.
I was in Hurricane Camille in 1969, living in New Orleans with my husband, who was a student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The horrors of 1969 were especially surreal for us, as we drove in the standstill traffic for hours. We weren`t just waiting for a hurricane. Our first baby was due to arrive that very week!
"Ladies and gentlemen, the city of New Orleans is in grave danger," the mayor said in his most solemn tone on Sunday morning, the day before Camille hit. I can still quote those words verbatim after thirty-six years. Hurricanes make lasting impressions on all witnesses, much more so on the most vulnerable. The Category Five hurricane was predicted to be heading straight at New Orleans. Other students who had survived Betsy, the much weaker yet still deadly hurricane that hit New Orleans in 1965, were especially terrified. "Get out of here now!" they urged us. We didn`t think about staying behind, never dreaming that New Orleans would end up being much safer than Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where we were headed to stay with friends. Camille would change course before we got to our destination!
By nightfall, we would know that we had driven straight into its path, in spite of following all warnings! We would experience the helplessness and sheer terror of 150-mile per hour winds swirling around us, knocking out transformers, and breaking huge trees like pick-up sticks, dropping them onto houses in the middle of a dark night. Yet, in the midst of it, in that very vulnerable condition, I also found that it was possible for me to experience a sense of release that one can only have by accepting that there is nothing more that I can do except to pray for strength, while waiting to see what forces may come to intervene.
Ten days later, with my beautiful new daughter in my arms, I stood in the hospital corridor, visiting with another new mother who had lost all material treasures. Yet she and her family of four were safe. Despite the fact that she`d just been told that insurance was worthless in that situation, because the damage had come primarily from water instead of wind, she smiled. The real treasures were safe–no lives had been lost in our families. Yet hundreds were still waiting to be found–many alive, many dead, and some in the process of dying–as emergency personnel struggled to get to them. All while we remained safe, rejoicing at our own survival. Together we marveled at the lessons of the hurricane.
I know the poverty of New Orleans better than most middle-class people who have been awakened to the chronic problems of that city. Ron was pastor of a church in the most poverty-stricken area (Desire) while I worked in public health nursing in the area ranking second (Irish Channel). We know the desperation and just how hard it was for people to get out. Yet, we do not pretend to know what it was really like to be both poor and in the middle of a hurricane.
Perhaps that is why I could hardly contain myself when, two days after Katrina hit, I heard a well-educated man whom I thought I knew well, making ignorant statements. "What right do these people have to be demanding that the government hurry down and get them out of that mess? They were told to evacuate! Besides, here they are (as if he was talking about ALL survivors) shooting people and grabbing anything they can find. I know what it`s like to be in a flood. Our entire basement was under water a few years ago. Remember that flood we had here? We picked ourselves up, called our insurance agent, took what they would give us, and didn`t ask anybody else for anything! We went on with our lives. After all, when you build a house, everyone knows that the first thing you do is get insurance. What`s the matter with these people? No way should anybody in that area be allowed to rebuild there. It`s stupid!!"
Was this part of the thinking, I immediately wondered, that was making the response so slow at all levels?
Whew! My blood pressure was probably at stroke level as he fired away this strange response to his wife, who told him that I had survived Camille. It seemed to me he was telling our family that we had been stupid to have lived in New Orleans thirty-six years ago. He never asked, and I never told him why we were there. He wasn`t interested in my story. Just as with the survivors of Katrina, this man in his upper-class home had no interest in the human element of surviving.
Fortunately for me, I was in a hurry. I didn`t need to get into high-gear with this guy. It would be counter-productive because I learned long ago, "it`s futile to argue with an incorrect sign post."
This man, a former insurance executive, was in no mood to comprehend much of anything. He needed to hear that most people in New Orleans don`t own homes, nor cars, nor funds to leave the city. In fact, many of the teens I knew in 1969 were as afraid to ride in a car as many people today are to ride in an airplane! I gave them their first ride in ANY vehicle to downtown New Orleans, from their homes only five miles away! I doubt things have changed much today.
I was so mad that I couldn`t think clearly. Yet I did have the satisfaction of seeing this man speechless when I said that most Homeowners Insurance Policies do not cover hurricanes. "Why?" he asked. "Because flood insurance is hard to come by, and the damage is more than likely to be from water, rather than wind," was my answer. I could tell from his wide-open mouth that he got that one!
Shaking my head in disbelief and grateful that I had another appointment, I left him with these words: "If the survivors all had your coping skills (I should have also said `resources`), then we could all think the way you do!"
I walked away, realizing that collusion looks strangely the same, no matter what the circumstances. It`s really not about the survivors at all, and survivors waste a lot of emotional energy believing that set minds can easily be changed to understand that neither the disaster nor the collusion is the fault of survivors. It`s all about the DIM thinking (Denial, Ignorance, and Minimization) of the "listener," whether the disaster is a hurricane, an accident, cancer, assault or sexual or physical abuse.
It happens because it is much easier to blame the innocent and deny the responsibility of people in the systems of power, than to respond to the enemy with appropriate aggression. It is a form of self-righteousness that keeps us from knowing "this could be me."
Fortunately, not everyone is as prejudiced against hurricane victims as this guy. Yet we are all prone to sometimes collude, when we do not want to face the reality of situations that seem foreign to our imagination. Knowing this fact doesn`t make it easier for the victims of collusion. It serves to remind us, however, that no one group of victims has a monopoly on the re-victimization that collusion brings. Overcoming our own collusion with evil, whether that evil comes from forces of nature, or from people, or systems, it is the job of every thinking person who wants to be compassionate.
Note: Dee Miller also specializes as an advocate for survivors of violence, especially as it pertains to clergy, and may be contacted at write-on@radiks.net or www.takecourage.org .
