Lending a hand to victims of hurricane

Making his way through the halls of headquarters with a military bearing and brisk manner, Red Cross volunteer John Green looked like a man on a mission — except for the slightly confused look on his face. The keys to his supply truck were missing.

"It's the small things that throw you," he said.

He'd been assigned to deliver a massive load of supplies to Monroe, La., but was four hours behind schedule and the mislaid supply truck keys were costing thousands of displaced citizens relief from thirst and hunger.

After tracking down the keys in the hands of a volunteer who had forgotten to return them, a frustrated Green ran out of the Wal-Mart that was serving as Red Cross headquarters in Baton Rouge and kicked his parked truck into gear for the trip to Monroe.

Green, a computer specialist for the dean of the college and the dean of undergraduate students who was born in Louisiana, had been tremendously affected by the disaster in New Orleans.

He saw people on TV pleading for food and water, volunteers seeking more aid, the governor looking to the public for support and the New Orleans mayor breaking down into tears. The collective force of these events made Green determined to help in any way he could.

So Green found himself "going back to give back." Though he would have found a way to volunteer regardless, the generous University policy of allowing "its employees to volunteer in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort for a period of two weeks with full salary" made his decision to contact the volunteer section of the Princeton Red Cross even simpler.

"I would have gone anyway, but with this [policy] ..." he said, giving a thumbs-up and smiling.

A few days later, Green was making the 10-mile, 1.5-hour congested commute from a section of Baton Rouge to the interstate. Working for the Red Cross in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was teaching him patience.

But coping with traffic is not the same as dealing with a herd of just-off-the-plane, female teenage volunteers who needed to be transported, along with the supplies, to his destination. "I thought I was in day camp," he said.

Green could do nothing as they demanded a bathroom break every 30 minutes of the five-hour emergency supply run, and he was incredulous at their refusal to eat food served at McDonald's when people were starving mere miles away.

"Some folks thought this was a vacation," he said.

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A taxing trip later, the teenage girls disembarked in Monroe city limits. Green made his way to an insurance company's abandoned corporate headquarters where thousands of people who had lost their livelihoods, possessions and family members were huddled in the hallways.

Walking through the floors of a building so massive that the pathways through the refugee crowds had street names, he watched as his supplies were disbursed.

After attending a Sept. 3 orientation, Green was sent home to pack with instructions to await an activation phone-call. Some of the volunteers who had gone through orientation would be activated; others would not.

A nervous but excited Green received the activation call the following day and was deployed immediately. His flight touched down in Baton Rouge on Sept. 5.

Not knowing where he was going to be assigned, what he was supposed to do or how he was to familiarize himself with the Red Cross operation, Green arrived at headquarters with nothing but a pack full of clothes and a willingness to do whatever was asked of him.

Because it was only day three of the organized relief effort, the headquarters was in chaos. Green was able to find a staffing post, make it known that he was here to help, and inform them that he had skills that the Red Cross might find useful. His experience with computers and the Internet earned him an immediate place on the Procurement Team in Material Support Services.

Cocooned in the interior of the Wal-Mart that had been transformed into Baton Rouge Red Cross headquarters, his team's responsibility was to purchase much needed supplies for the thousands of dispossessed citizens in shelters across Louisiana. "I had to think on a large scale."

Forklifts to handle pallets of water, diesel fuel to maintain food refrigeration units, port-a-potties for refugee populations and showers for shelters were among the myriad supply requests that Green's team was designed to handle.

He worked 14-hour days, stopping only for breaks to eat and sleep. He was constantly reminded of the team's maxim: Get the goods to the warehouses and then to the people by any means necessary as fast as possible.

Everyday a deluge of procurement requests would tear through his office, and at times it was not enough for him to make the phone calls, cajole suppliers, arrange delivery and ensure proper pickup.

On some occasions, he would have to load the supply trucks and deliver the goods to the locations where they were desperately needed. With traffic, these supply runs became exercises in boredom punctuated by moments of sharp fear. If anything were to go wrong with the truck or the supplies, the virtual lack of cell phone service ensured that drivers had nothing to rely on save their own wits.

The job wasn't the most glamorous, Green said, but it provided the people in the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center with their basic needs.

There, in a room the size of Jadwin Gymnasium, 1,000 people temporarily without jobs, homes or possessions slept in cots. They washed in hastily-assembled showers, used portable toilets and visited makeshift hospitals.

They relied on Green and the procurement team for showers, toilets, supplies and food and water.

Green left Louisiana after two weeks. He still dreams about it. "I was in a funk when I got back," he said. "I was warned by [University] Health Services that I would have dreams when I got back." Occasionally in his sleep, as he dozes off, he'll feel overwhelmed.

But he carries to Princeton more than just harried dreams. On the flight from Baton Rouge to Philadelphia, an exhausted Green was engrossed in a conversation with a soldier who had just returned from Iraq only to be sent to Louisiana for the relief effort. She would have only one week of leave before having to report back to Iraq for duty.

As she and Green walked through the corridors of O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, he noticed two businessmen wearing suits, ties and hands-free cell phones moving easily through the walkways.

At one time, Green would have thought it was "so cool" that they were networking and making business deals on the fly. But instead of turning to watch their progress through the airport, he nearly shook his head and switched his attention back to the servicewoman's words.

Green's Louisiana service brought him perspective: "Priority on things that matter, [and] some things just don't," he said.