Easing pain of hurricane

RECENT HURRICANES in Florida hit home for Kelly McAnally, of Coeur d’Alene.

McAnally, a registered nurse who works in the intensive care unit at Kootenai Medical Center, volunteered to help for two weeks through her church and the Red Cross. She returned Sept. 19 still reeling from what she saw.

“I assumed we’d go to the shelter, do our job and come back,” she said. “But it was more than that.”

Her trip started at church when Gordon Mills, pastor of the Kingston Baptist Church, spread word of an e-mail he got the night before asking for help in the hurricane aftermath. Seven people said they were willing to go.

Mills said he was pleased with the church response, with four of about 60 regular worshippers answering the call. Dale Helbig of Silverton and Dave Burden of Pinehurst made the trip with Mills and McAnally.

“Disastrous things can happen to people anywhere at any time,” Mills said. “For people to respond and raise up and do anything they can to assist is something that really needs to happen.”

The group made arrangements, cleared their schedules and left the following Tuesday. They helped in the aftermath of Hurricane Frances and sat ready for Hurricane Ivan. Each gave a two-week commitment, but when asked to stay if needed, they were willing to help out, he said.

After a series of airline delays in Chicago and several Red Cross formalities in Atlanta, the group flew to Orlando and set up an emergency shelter in a church gymnasium. The gym was about half the size of an elementary gym and had only two electrical outlets.

Outside, the devastation was overwhelming, McAnally said, with billboards, trees and buildings hardly holding up to the storm. She brought several cameras, but didn’t take any photos. To do so would have felt like she was taking a souvenir of their tragedy, she said.

“I would see a mobile home park – or where one was – and there was nothing,” she said. “And I’d wonder where the pieces were.”

Inside their shelter, the group set up a series of cots and the gym filled, slowly, with elderly. Each person had about 3 feet of personal space and their only belongings fit beneath their cots.

“We began realizing this was an aged population and many were separated from their families and spouses,” she said.

She and the other volunteers stayed at a nearby hotel and took shifts at the shelter. McAnally and another nurse split 12-hour shifts until a third nurse came to ease the workload. But she often stayed late and showed up early. The Red Cross tapped McAnally’s nursing experience and put her in charge of keeping the refugees in good health. She said some had medications, diabetes or other health problems that needed constant monitoring and she made a trip to a nearby pharmacy every day.

An added struggle was making sure enough outlets were available for those on oxygen tanks.

The shelter population swelled to about 150 elderly at one point, and about 50 needing more intensive care were sent to another shelter. For many, the shelter was the fifth or sixth since the string of hurricanes hit the area.

Overall, she said the event was humbling to see firsthand. Having never experienced a disaster, she had seen only the struggle through younger people, often shown in photos or on TV, upset at having lost the same things. But she said the outlook of the refugees changed her view.

“It’s real pain, but this group of people didn’t do that,” said McAnally. “They took it in stride. They’d lived life, been through the Depression, raised their kids. They were content with what they had and who they were.”

They were simple, resourceful and respectful, she said. She remembers nights in the church gym filled with the sound of a guitar and old hymns as they sang together. They prayed before meals and sang “Amazing Grace” every night.

Those who couldn’t sleep would stay up and visit with the volunteers. When the all-clear came and they were told they could return home, the church was empty within an hour.

“I cried, like the others,” said McAnally. “And then it was over.”