Headed for Disaster
Story by PA1 Amy Thomas, PACAREA Public Affairs
Photos by PA3 James Harless, 8th District Public Affairs
“It just sort of slammed me,” Campbell said. “I spent 50 to 60 hours a week there in that community, and to see the devastation really hit me.” She knew she couldn’t just sit by and watch people suffer. “Then my daughter said, ‘Hey, Mom, you’re good at organizing. Why don’t you get some stuff together and take it down?’”
Drawing on her past experience working as a Red Cross disaster coordinator, she followed her 17-year-old daughter's advice and decided to collect donations and take a truckload of necessities to the town of Long Beach, Miss.
When Campbell went to work the next day and told her co-workers what she planned to do, they immediately rallied behind her and gave money, toiletries and other essentials for her trip. Someone called the local newspaper, which ran a story Sept. 9, and before long she had donations pouring in from all over Northern California. From there, it simply snowballed.
“I went from thinking I’d take a pickup truck down there and maybe spend some time helping to coordinate, to taking two large moving trucks full of supplies and coordinating a lot of things on this end,” Campbell said. After collecting all the donations they could carry, Campbell and two other volunteer drivers headed southeast for Mississippi.
Campbell said she was dismayed at the lack of communication and coordination she found when she arrived. She said that the Red Cross, which has always been the main disaster relief agency, was not equipped to handle a response of this magnitude by itself. Donations were pouring in, but without a communications network much of it was not getting to the people who so desperately needed help.
“We visited one POD [point of distribution] where they had a pallet full of medical equipment sitting in a corner with a layer of dust on it,” Campbell said. When she asked about it, one volunteer worker said that they had gotten the equipment in and had no idea of where to send it, but were afraid of turning donations down at the risk of losing them.
So, it fell to small non-profit organizations and individuals, like Campbell, to take up the slack. Working with Relief Spark, a California-based non-profit group established solely to aid hurricane victims, she began traveling around the region to different distribution centers, talking to people, and taking inventory of what supplies and equipment donations they had and what they needed. Before long, she amassed a veritable library of low profile and grassroots charitable organizations, and she became a sort of unofficial ambassador to them all.
“She’s a one-woman grassroots organization by herself,” said Sidney Ray, executive director for the Van Nuys-based Relief Spark. “She’s spent [thousands of] dollars of her own money to fill up trucks with supplies for the people in Mississippi. We need more dedicated and energetic people just like her.”
Ray said she had heard about Campbell’s work and offered her a position as team leader for the organization.
“Lisa is the powerhouse of Northern California,” Ray said. “She’s a great scout for us, and that helps us determine exactly where the need is [in the South].”
Campbell said it was extremely important that all the relief workers, as well as those they were there to help have a central contact to turn to.
“This will be a long term recovery effort – five, six, seven years – and it’s easier if the same people stay involved,” Campbell said.
“While I was in Gautier [Miss.], a group came down from Chicago with a bus full of medical supplies: exam tables, blood pressure cuffs, things a physician would need to use,” Campbell said. “A few days earlier, I had been at another POD that had a medical clinic set up, so I took them over there and they were absolutely thrilled to have that equipment.”
Campbell stayed in Mississippi for two weeks, running supplies back and forth between PODs, and helping the needy connect with providers. When she returned home to California, she continued networking and directing donations from all over the country and Canada, and recruiting others to do the same.
Campbell returned to Mississippi Oct. 11 for another two-week stint. This time, she focused her energy on helping people sift through the physical remains of their lives to help them gain back even a small amount of control before the bulldozers came through. She said volunteers are essential for these clean up efforts, because the citizens just don’t have the financial or emotional wherewithal to do it alone.
“These are some of the poorest communities in the nation,” Campbell said. “Four to five weeks later, people are still walking around with a thousand-yard stare like a bomb had been dropped on them. It’s still a battle.”
Petty Officer 2nd Class Kate Bogle, a crewmember on the Los Angeles-based Coast Guard Cutter George Cobb, heard about Campbell’s campaign and volunteered to transport 200 donated bicycles to the distribution center in Van Nuys, Calif.
“Her husband called me up one day and said he’d heard I’d volunteered to go to Louisiana, and asked if I wanted to help,” Bogle said. “I think what she’s doing is awesome. I know she’s spent a lot of time and her own money. It’s a lot harder than it looks, facilitating all this.”
For Thanksgiving, Campbell arranged another other trip south to help give Thanksgiving dinner to 5,000 people in Long Beach, Miss., complete with fried turkey and all the trimmings. After all, she said, “it is Thanksgiving in the South.” For this trip, Campbell took her husband and kids with her. She said they’d been supportive of her efforts all along but wanted them to see the devastation up close.
“Service has always been important to me,” Campbell said. “But I don’t think my kids fully comprehend it or understand why I keep doing it. Plus, they’re hard workers. I can use their help,” she added, grinning.
Campbell said she is in awe of the courage of the people who were traumatized by Katrina. Despite all that they’ve been through, they remain proud and want to rebuild, want to put their lives back together.
She recalled the story of one man in Waveland, Miss., who was separated from his wife when the storm surge hit. His clothes were ripped from him and he spent the next seven hours clinging to a tree waiting to be rescued. As of Oct. 19, he still had not found his wife.
“When I came across him he was set up in a Quonset hut in Waveland with a generator, two freezers, and a stove, feeding his community,” Campbell said. “He was doing it because it gave him something to do; it helped him feel like he was part of the rebuilding.”
Like most Good Samaritan’s, Campbell is quick to brush off any praise or credit for her accomplishments and redirects the attention to the broad relief effort. Although her next trip isn’t planned until Easter, Campbell will continue to nurture relief response via telephone and through Relief Spark until the need is no longer there.
“She’s always been there to rescue people,” said her husband, Master Chief Petty Officer Arlen Campbell. “That’s who she is – a rescuer. What else is this life all about?”
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