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Chapter One

Get in the Boat

I saw the same images you did: rooftops barely exposed above water, bodies floating in rivers, the Superdome overrun with people and trash, the crush of humanity trying to escape the floods and the shelters. Looters, soldiers, politicians, residents, and journalists reaching their boiling points, often on television.

When I got to New Orleans a few days after Hurricane Katrina blew through in September 2005, telephone poles looked like mangled fingers from an underground monster. Tops of trees were shorn off. Steel beams from unfinished structures bent as if they were still resisting the wind.

I was in an RV with some relief workers, trying to find out where shipments of medicine and mobile medical clinics needed to go. The few other vehicles on the road were either emergency or military, all heavily armed. The only real traffic was in the sky. Hundreds of helicopters ratcheted overhead. There was no electricity. There were no inhabitants. It felt like the end of the world.

On the way to the West Jefferson hospital—one of the three in the Parish that was open—we got lost. Maps were useless because roads were gone. Checkpoint guards made us turn around. As we came over a hill on Veterans Boulevard, we encountered police officers with automatic weapons who waved us down. We got out, not believing what we saw through the windshield. There was no road ahead. The entire community was under water. Rescue boats were ferrying people from their homes to dry land. The rescuers knew there were still survivors in that water. They would worry about the bodies later, they said.

An elderly woman approached the uniformed men.

“Are you taking people from this neighborhood to see their homes?” she asked.

“No. Maybe in a few weeks. Right now we’re trying to get them out, not in.”

She turned to me.

“Can you take me to see my house? I want to see what’s still there before I leave forever.”

Waist-deep in the water was a wiry, unbathed, unshaven Al Pacino–looking man, a cigarette in his mouth and one behind each ear. He was dislodging his fishing boat from a tree branch.

“Can you take this lady to see her house?” I shouted to him.

He squinted at her.

“What’s your address?”

She told him.

“We’re neighbors. Get in the boat.”

She looked at the water. It was a color not found in nature, fouled with floating animals, waste, and debris. Putrid. Toxic. Diseased.

“Wait there,” he told her. He slogged out of the water and, like a drenched fireman, carried her to the boat, gently settling her in it. He came back for her 60-year-old niece and plopped her next to her aunt. He looked me over.

“I’m not carrying you. If you want to go, get in.”

I waded in, trying to remember the last time I had taken medicine for the hundreds of diseases now soaking through my blue jeans.

What this man was doing was serving his neighbor, as so many others did during this catastrophe. A woman needed a ride. He had a boat.

We motored past (and above!) this lady’s church, the school her children attended, and the neighborhood convenience store, which our driver circled for a few minutes, using his landing net to scoop up cartons of cigarettes floating at the rooftop.

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“I guess now I’m a looter,” he confessed.

He cut the engine a few houses from our destination, and quiet momentum carried us the rest of the way. The bow of the boat gently bumped against the useless gutters of the house. Our companion had lived in this house for seventy-nine years.

“The oak tree looks good,” she said, looking at the top third, all that was visible. Who knows what childhood memories that tree held? She gazed at the house for several minutes, the way we visit headstones at cemeteries. No one made a sound.

“The roof’s gone,” she said, finally.

“Is there something you wish you could get?” I asked her.

“I’ve got my life,” she said. “There’s nothing in there that I can’t replace.”

“We don’t want to get stranded here after dark,” the driver announced, starting the motor.

On the return trip the propeller stalled briefly after hitting a submerged vehicle.

Walking back up the street, the lady bone dry and I soaking wet, I asked her if she had cried yet.

“None of that has come out,” she said. Then she turned to look me right in the eye. “I feel like I died and woke up. That’s my old life, out in that water. It’s over. Now I have to move on.”

The three hurricanes that hit the United States and Central America in 2005—Katrina, Rita, and Wilma—exposed some serious flaws in the way we respond to disaster. I flew into a military base in New Orleans and was hit immediately by the concerns of the local firefighters. They couldn’t communicate with other emergency services. They didn’t know where the greatest needs were.

I also talked with the directors of emergency operations centers. They told me they could not get through to local, state, or national governments to tell them what they needed. I was approached by a Red Cross worker with a pickup truck loaded with hundreds of boxes of food.

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“I have all this food, but I don’t know where to take it,” he said, frustration rising in his voice. “I don’t know who needs it.”

He gave me dozens of cartons of ready-to-eat meals to give away if I saw anyone who looked hungry. Within a few miles I found an apartment building where people had been stranded since the storm, with no food, water, electricity, or ice. The food was gone in minutes.

The hurricanes exposed flaws in government services, communication systems, levee systems, and in leadership.

But they exposed something else as well.

When people around the world saw the needs of those who were stranded and abandoned, they dropped everything and rushed in. Volunteers were on the scene days before government agencies were deployed. The people who saw the need and showed up were not organized. They just showed up.

Caravans of rental trucks loaded with food, water, tents, generators, and other supplies began arriving from states thousands of miles away, paid for by private citizens. Individuals chartered planes to fly people out of the New Orleans Superdome at their own expense and put them in safe lodging. Doctors and nurses arrived, not waiting until they had licensing paperwork approved by the state. Students boarded their college buses and vans and headed south. Neighborhood schools and individuals started fundraisers around the country. Churches and businesses in the affected communities left their doors unlocked to provide shelter for both victims and relief workers.

Some bad things happened there, too. I wish they hadn’t. They are a part of human nature that we see more than we care to: shootings, looting, people taking advantage of those who can’t defend themselves.

But the other side of human nature, represented by people wanting to help, people having something to give (their time, their resources, their expertise), people acting immediately, showed me that serving others comes as naturally as any of our other behaviors. What I saw in the hurricane aftermath underscored what I said in the Introduction:

• Everyone has something to give.
• Everyone can do something now.
• Many people are willing to give if they are presented the opportunity.

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It also revealed something that we don’t talk about in our culture very much. There simply are not enough government programs in the world to take care of everyone’s needs. There aren’t even enough agencies in the United States, the richest country in the world. There aren’t enough FEMAs (Federal Emergency Management Administration), there aren’t enough National Guards, there aren’t enough fire departments or other emergency services, there aren’t enough corporations, there aren’t enough tax dollars.

There are, however, enough people.

We learned from the hurricanes that if we wait for the government— any government—we will be waiting too long. Government and Big Business cannot meet every need. They cannot move quickly enough or efficiently enough. In 2005 we saw tens of thousands of people who didn’t want to wait. Waiting meant death and suffering for too many people. So they responded and served others. The levees of compassion, love, and service held strong.

Individuals, neighborhoods, and churches responded as if they were made for these kinds of situations, which is exactly my point!

When news of hurricane Katrina became known, our offices at Heart to Heart were overwhelmed with calls from individuals. Our staff worked late into the nights and on weekends just to answer the phone calls from people offering to help.

“I’m an EMT [emergency medical technician] and I can help,” one caller said. “I have a job interview tomorrow, but forget that. I can change jobs later.”

“I can drive supply trucks if you need me,” said another. Volunteer drivers showed up in our offices from as far away as San Francisco, just wanting to help. One Californian who showed up had recently returned from the war in Iraq.

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One man, who was converting a semi truck into a mobile medical clinic with plans to ship it to a village in Bolivia, called and said he could make it available in New Orleans before sending it to South America.

Costco called. FedEx called. Kmart called. Pharmaceutical companies called. They had something to give. They were willing to serve because they saw the need. They could do something right then; they didn’t want to wait.

Institutions can’t and won’t save us when we need help. And let’s admit it: We all need help sometimes. The corollary is that we all need to help sometimes. That’s what gives our lives meaning and significance.

We might not all have the opportunity to go to a disaster area. In fact, if too many people come to a disaster area to help, the result can be confusion that compounds the problem. But those who did go can encourage and inspire us to look around our own neighborhoods and become aware of the needs of others. The hurricanes exposed problems that had been invisible or ignored for years. Likewise, there are people within your reach whose needs are not obvious. It doesn’t have to take a big event for us to see them. Look around. We can start serving others right where we are.

The test is not what you can do in the aftermath of a hurricane. It’s what you can do for the widow next door or the single parent on your street. Does he or she need help running errands? Does your neighbor need someone to read to her? It’s not about waiting for disasters to hit. It’s about not waiting, and serving now. It involves an awareness and lifestyle shift that occurs when you simply look at what is within your reach and start where you are.

I am certain that there is someone nearby who you can serve. You and the person in need are neighbors, just like “Al Pacino” and the elderly woman at the edge of their submerged community in New Orleans.

You’re looking at the same boat, and the water is rising.

It’s time to get in.