In the Midst of Disaster – Again
Katrina responder applies lessons learned to deal with oil spill As the regional administrator for the Louisiana Office of Public Health in New Orleans, Avis Gray was at ground zero when the levees surrounding the city broke and cannot forget what she saw in the weeks that followed.
“There was a moment when I was told we would need 20,000 body bags,” Gray said. “It was beyond comprehension. If you stopped and thought about it, it was too much.”
Like many who served as first responders to Katrina, Gray was affected personally by the disaster. Her own home in New Orleans East was destroyed, yet she spent the first week after the levees broke tirelessly helping to coordinate the evacuation of the Louisiana Superdome and other areas of the city in Katrina’s aftermath. When the levees gave way, Gray used her energy and initiative to organize bus drivers into an impromptu response and recovery team as the water poured in.
“We were our own cavalry,” Gray said. “Given what we had, we did an awesome job.”
The years since Katrina have been reflective ones for many who were involved in the response, both personally and professionally. Much of the city, especially the Lower 9th Ward, remains largely destroyed. For Gray, who still serves as the regional administrator responsible for some of the worst affected areas of the city, Katrina brought with it a long list of lessons learned.
“What has happened for all of us is the understanding that no man is an island,” Gray said. “We now have a regional plan. We used to operate as individual parishes, but we can’t survive like that.”
Now, Gray said that government agencies across the state and between states are working together across sectors to better understand the capabilities and weaknesses of each organization so that they can respond more quickly and efficiently when disaster strikes, as several have since Katrina in 2005.
“You have to think of your continuity of operations plan. H1N1 taught us that,” Gray said. “From a medical standpoint, an acronym might mean one thing to me and to a policeman it might mean something else. We
have to learn each other’s language.”
To help make those connections, a Southeast Louisiana Meta-Leadership Summit for Preparedness took place in New Orleans in June 2010. The Summit was held just over a month after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caused oil to begin spewing into the Gulf, catapulting responders like Gray once again into a major emergency.
At the Summit, more than 120 leaders like Gray came together to strengthen their teamwork for large-scale disasters like the oil spill, Katrina, terrorist attacks and pandemic flu.
“The impact of this oil spill is going to exceed Katrina,” Gray said. “It’s going to affect the cultural livelihood of our fishermen. A way of life, a culture, may be destroyed.”
If there is a bright spot to emerge, it is that leaders come to the crisis having already made connections with other leaders during Hurricane Katrina.
“Because of my background in high-risk areas I’m a ‘jump in and do it’ kind of person,” Gray said. “I had to learn to bring it down a level and say ‘Let’s make a plan here.’ I have a respect now for what everybody brings to the table.”
Touring the Lower 9th Ward with visitors to her native city, Gray’s love for the people and history of New Orleans is evident. Though she lost much to the flooding, she is acutely aware of how much others lost to Katrina, which killed as many as 1,600 people in the city and damaged or destroyed 80 percent of the homes. Working long days again as the oil spill ravages the state’s coast, Gray said she is better prepared now for the challenges she will face as the spill and its aftermath drag on.
“That’s what leadership is,” Gray said. “I’ve got to be calm in the face of crazy.”
|
