Barry,
I really have to wonder if you have read this entire thread
It started with one article about one shelter and those same conditions have been confirmed in various shelters across many states -- media reports, videos, first hand reports of OTHERS that work in shelters and do clean-up, first responders, NOLA citizens themselves.
You just don't want to hear.
Interesting. I have thought the very same thing about you.
There is nothing here -- other than the haz-mat and decontamination claims -- that is new. The claims, that is. Actually, there are other cases where MEDICAL ISSUES in other states during other disasters that have caused Red Cross to engage specialized cleaning services. Not often, but it has happened from time to time. Shelters can be places where disease runs rampent, though they usually are not THAT terribly bad -- not bad enough to cause haz-mat situations, anyway.
The rest is actually old hash, for those of us who work disaster shelters on a regular basis. Nothing we have not SEEN FIRST HAND in other places and at other times.
The only thing that might be unique is tying in the condition of the shelters specific to the folks who were in the shelters in such a public and degretory way.
Folks who are inexperienced with shelters might make that mistake, especially with an evacuation as massive as Gustav, and involving a group of people as popular as the Welfare Queens made all New Orleanians after Katrina.
But those of us who have worked alot of shelters in alot of different places and times have seen first hand the sort of stuff that has been reported ad nauseum in the first two pages of this thread. Hell, what do you think the two threads you and I were engaged in this past weekend were all about????????????
And believe me, we've seen these conditions at many different times, in many different places, with many different groups of people.
It is you, Sassy, who are either so naive as to think this has never happened before, or too prejudiced to consider the possibility that these unsanitary conditions might be due to one or more of the five factors that the SHELTER EXPERTS have identified as being the factors that influence this most, rather than conveniently "buying into" the very negative and personalized characterization that folks who just can't pass up the chance to take "one more peck" at New Orleanians are squawking about in front of the TV cameras?.
It is wrong that you keep making excuses for this behavior instead of coming up ways to resolve it....
Yes, Ms. Sassy, and what is YOUR suggestion for improving the situation????
Actually, if you read the material bolded in post # above, there are suggestions for improvement that are implicit; just a matter of reading between the lines.
But since you seem to need everything drawn out plainly and clearly for you, here are five suggestions for improving the situations in the shelters:
1, First and formost: significantly reduce the number of people you cram into an individual shelter. I have worked shelters where I couldn't walk between the cots they were so close together (of course, I'm built like a football player so I am a bit larger than most). In some shelters I have worked at, people had to stow what few belongings they had with them UNDERNEATH the cot, because there was no place else for the stuff to go.
2, Restrict the number of small children and really old elderly people that you will allow in a shelter. I guess we can store the excess small children with the pets, wherever they are warehoused. I guess another alternative would be to ducktape all small children to their cots -- no, come to think of it, that would leave tape residue on the cots and then prissy college administrators would have to call a press conference and complain about that....
OK, this one I throw in sarcastically, because there is nothing we can do about it if it turns out that the population we are asked to serve is one that has huge numbers of small children. I understand they have the same problem in shelters over in Utah, with all those MORMONs over there popping so many kids out of the oven....
(Please don't flame me on that one, I'm LDS myself...)
3, Limit the number of people coming into the shelters with contagious diseases. Red Cross always has a nurse in every shelter, and she does the best she can do to contain diseases, but again, we cannot refuse services to a person who has a cold or the flu or diarrhea. Sometimes conditions allow the nurse to move the sick person to another room or something, and if there is room to do it, they will.
One thing that definitely would help is for them to screen shelter victims for lesser common but more serious medical issues. And in fact, they do make every attempt to do this. As mentioned before, there was a deliberate attempt by FEMA to route medical evacuees to just a few target areas specially designated to take them. Memphis was one of those places. We took in large numbers of elderly, diseased, injured and disabled folks and placed them in our hospital system or in the Ed Rice Special Medical Needs Shelter, which had plenty of 24/7 medical staff on duty.
4, Make sure that there are at least 1 toilet for every 8 males and 1 toilet for every 5 females. More would be better. And make sure that there is plenty of seat covers (especially for the ladies), plenty of anti-bacterial soap, and plenty of feminine protection items available for those who need them. A baby changing area would make things much better as well. I have never worked a shelter that had plenty of toilets or porta potties available that also had really bad cleanliness problems too -- with the one exception of a shelter I once worked where there were a bunch of juveniles that got together and decided that overflowing the toilets was good sport. I don't remember where that was for sure. I think it might have been during the flood I worked in West Virginia back in 1996, but I'm not sure about that. It could have been Johnson City, Tennessee in 1997 (or 1998). Geez, I've worked so many of these shelters by this time that I don't remember details about every one of them.
5, Same thing with showers. If they had one shower for every -- oh, maybe 8 people or so -- I don't think cleanliness of the shelter itself would be a problem.
By the way, on the number of toilets and showers that would be optimal, I don't know of any scientific studies that would help identify the numbers. That's Barry's opinion of how many toilets and showers per resident would eliminate problems, and if you think that number is too low or too high, that's OK. The point is that if you have enough toilets, showers, anti-bacterial soap, washcloths and towels, it helps ALOT.
The problem is that most government and/or Red Cross official shelters cram way too many people into too small of an area, and that is a Big Time invitation to problems of All Kinds Imaginable -- from cleanliness problems to health and safety issues to problems with theft to who knows what.
So my suggestion for improving the sheltering system would be to reduce the number of people you cram into a given shelter at least to the point where people have a little bit of "private room" around their cots. At least to a level where disease and foul smells will not run rampant, noise levels will not be deafening, children will not be climbing all over those who do not want to be around children, etc. Reduce the number down to a manageable number not only for the floor space available, but for the toilet facilities and shower facilities available. Make sure that shelter residents who have communicable diseases can be segregated from the rest.
And treat evacuees with respect, even if you don't think they deserve it.
Those are MY suggestions, Sassy.
I'm waiting to hear yours.