UPDATE - tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri and other locations

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Dear Colleagues,

For those of us who were watching the news and weather, on Sunday evening there was a point where many of might have lost our clinical detachment. For those of us who are hospital based, the destruction of St. John's Hospital in Joplin, Missouri, and calling the "Code Gray"---evacuate all patients to the hallways (rehearsed so often in disaster drills). Our worst nightmare---a place of healing destroyed and statewide appeals for doctors, nurses, police, and firemen to come help at medical triage centers set up in Memorial Hall.

It is surreal. I'm sitting in a hotel room now in Kansas City at National VOAD with a colleague who lives in Guthrie, Oklahoma, who an hour ago called her husband and children and went over the disaster plan in a calm, reassuring mother-knows-best voice. Take these tornado warnings seriously. Pack up your laptop, chargers, and journals, and go to the basement or storm cellar. Text messages get through. Cellphone calls do not.

The Oklahoma weather radioman repeats the two rules: 1) Get as low as you can...2) put as many walls between you as you can.

Now, the Joplin tornado has been upgraded to an F5 and 123 fatalities. I'm still recruiting chaplains for Integrated Care Teams for Alabama...and Missouri...and, now possibly Oklahoma---although they are very "used" to tornadoes and have the weather technology, warnings, and "know how" painfully 'achieved'.

it is torture watching the estimated times next to communities on the side of the screen. Five minutes before the tornado hits your house. Have you been able to wrangle all the dogs and cats, kids, neighbors, relatives into the basement?

Please consider this repeated appeal to deploy with the American Red Cross and our Spiritual Care Response Team through our partnerships with the professional chaplaincy partners.

Now, my colleagues are pointing right to the television screen...they know how to read the doppler radar...they know the path that tornadoes historically track.

If you are not a current American Red Cross SRT member, I urge you to complete your volunteer paperwork with your nearest Red Cross chapter so that you can be more expeditiously deployed. There are no shortcuts, unless you are a first responder in your own community. Please email me your availability. My hope is that you can consider a two week deployment. You will be working with Health and Disaster Mental Health professionals and caseworkers making condolence calls and providing emotional and spiritual support.

Thanks for considering this volunteer opportunity and making this unique service commitment. Board Certification is required due to the intensity and complexity of these deployments. You will need to be flexible and patient. It is a hardship deployment. You need to be in good health. You know how to work as a member of a team. Your clinical training transfers quite remarkably into the disaster arena. Thanks for considering this invitation to serve those so profoundly impacted by these continuous catastrophic natural disasters.

We need to work together. We need to support our colleagues and their communities. We need to support our colleagues. These disasters have become personal to so many of us in the chaplaincy world. We know how vital it is to not succumb to compassion fatigue, as well as model self-care. We know how vital it is to take care of our colleagues---the response community---that has been fully engaged in responses since the end of March. This has been eight weeks of non-stop pressure and stress. The toll of caring for others and those who care for others is real.

Thanks for considering this repeated invitation to serve.

Earl

Earl E. Johnson, MDiv, BCC
Senior Associate, Spiritual Care, Disaster Partnerships American Red Cross NHQ
2025 E. St. NW
Washington, DC 20006
202.303.8642

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