We received this report on the situation on the Gulf Coast of Texas for people with disabilities in the wake of Hurricane Ike from United Spinal Board member Lex Frieden of Houston:
Hurricane Ike post five days: We got power on at our home a little while ago. About half of our city is still without power, and folks from Galveston to Beaumont will be without power (and many of them without homes) for a long long time. We lost a tree and a fence.
Amazingly, our cable and Internet access seems to have survived the storm without interruption–or it was fixed before the power came back on here. Anyway, it is great to be able to charge your wheelchair in a place other than a hospital hallway or a grocery store shopping cart storage area. It will also be nice not to go on daily excursions in search of gasoline, ice and propane. Obviously, we followed directions and had our tank topped off before the storm hit.
My wife, Joyce, could be considered a kind of survivalist, so we were well stocked for this event. We have enough water remaining in bottles to keep us in good stead for about four more weeks. We have enough canned food and other non perishables to last us probably another six weeks. I have enough batteries to keep my radio going for about four more weeks – - but lanterns run batteries down really fast. We were just getting to the point that we had to go to bed before dark and get up at dawn. Now, thankfully I can resume my 7:00 AM to 1:00 AM normal schedule.
Our neighbor has a generator, but we want to avoid storing flammable liquids, so we do not keep gasoline to run a generator. We have been washing dishes and clothing the old fashioned way, and we have been boiling water and cooking our food on the gas grill out back. We conserve our batteries by listening to the radio about 3 hours per day.
I just stopped for a second writing this message to plug in the chargers for my wheelchair, cell phone, lanterns, radios and my electric razor. If the power goes out again tonight, I will be ready, again. I guarantee you I will not risk sleeping upstairs and possibly needing the elevator for a few days. It will take me that long to reach for a light switch instead of a flashlight, and to close the doors and windows so that we are not air conditioning the outside.
During the last few days, I have been working with colleagues who were reachable by cell phone to organize recovery and relief efforts for people with disabilities. About 3000 people with disabilities were evacuated prior to the storm, and most of them are in an Air Force Hospital in San Antonio. Many of them will not have a home to return to – - ever. Actually, those people are being well cared for at this point. The people we are most concerned about are those young and old people with disabilities who were instructed to “shelter in place” by public authorities, and who stayed in their homes to weather the storm. Assuming they followed the instructions of the public authorities, they were prepared to survive using bottled water and nonperishable foods for three days. Many of them who have needs for power also were well stocked with batteries for an emergency.
Now, five days after the storm hit, most of those people have run out of water and food and batteries. If they try to call local emergency assistance numbers, like I did, they will get a busy signal, they will get put on hold indefinitely, they will get a person who tells them they have no relevant information, or they will be given a phone number, as I was, to an organization whose offices were destroyed by the storm. Calling FEMA will get you on a list for some kind of assistance later on, after they process the lists, but FEMA is unable to provide any local technical assistance information. Many people with disabilities, and probably others, are still in bad shape.
Interestingly, many of the people whom I have discovered need help are people who registered well before the storm on the 211 emergency assistance system. The system worked well for those people who lived in mandatory evacuation zones and who needed to be evacuated. I am not aware of anyone who was registered who was not evacuated by one means or another. Our metropolitan transit authority paratransit system, along with our emergency preparedness officials, did a great job with this task. However, there are approximately 11,000 other people on the 211 list who sheltered in place who have yet to be called to check on their well being, and I believe that is a disaster in itself. They were promised help in these circumstances, and nobody has even called to check on them.
Last night I was able to locate a volunteer who filled a 5 gallon gasoline can to take to a woman who uses a ventilator. Her gasoline powered generator was about to run dry. She would have expired early this morning, if we have not found gasoline and a volunteer to deliver it to her. Red Cross offered no assistance to her, and neither did any other local aid agencies.
All of my colleagues at ILRU have been about similar tasks–trying to figure out how to help people who are in need. We are all reminded of the 3000 plus calls for help that we answered and responded to after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
I am currently trying to get funding to support an 800 line number and staffing to provide assistance to those people with disabilities who are trying to recover from this disaster. We would also like to have some funds to be able to assist people directly, by doing things like purchasing and delivering gasoline to them for their generators.
Thanks for your prayers. Wish our city well, Lex
