Relief effort both taxing, rewarding

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, October 23, 2005

MUKILTEO – As a military chaplain, Steven Rich counseled crews that had to retrieve the damaged bodies of people killed in plane crashes. He informed many families of the deaths of their loved ones.

Kevin Nortz / The Herald Retired military chaplain Steve Rich is back home in Mukilteo. He reflects on his Hurricane Katrina relief work at a Red Cross shelter in Baton Rouge, La., where he helped train clergy dealing with people trying to find missing family members.

Rich, a Mukilteo resident, said it was no easier being in Louisiana recently and working not only with people who had lost loved ones to Hurricane Katrina, but with other relief workers who were feeling the grief as well.

“It never gets easy, it never becomes perfunctory,” he said.

Rich, 56, a retired Navy and Air Force chaplain and now a private counselor and public speaker, knew his skills would be useful in the disaster zone. He volunteered with the Red Cross, underwent training and arrived in Baton Rouge, La., on Sept. 29.

He became another of those who helped swell the city’s population from 250,000 to 800,000 in the aftermath of the Aug. 29 hurricane that devastated New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast areas.

He worked at several shelters, in Baton Rouge and closer to New Orleans. His primary job was at a morgue in St. Gabriel, a small town 22 miles from Baton Rouge and about 50 miles from New Orleans.

His first job was to bless the trucks of the dead.

“They asked me to say a blessing and a prayer for every truck that came through and every truck that left,” Rich said. Even if a truck came through in the earliest hours of the morning, he got up and greeted the crew and its truck.

Hundreds of bodies came through the morgue while he was there, a month or more after the hurricane, Rich said.

Another of his jobs was to redirect people who had come to the morgue looking for loved ones. A separate location, called a Family Find Center, had been set up as the headquarters for processing the identifications of missing people and trying to match them with a body, living or dead.

Many of the bodies were badly decomposed, having laid in floodwaters for weeks, and took time to identify. People were understandably upset about the mortuary not having any information, and sometimes would vent their frustrations to him, Rich said.

“Some people express grief through tears, some do it with anger,” he said.

One woman who could not find her 80-year-old mother who had been sheltered in the Superdome yelled at him for a long time, he said.

“I just let her go,” he said. “I let ‘em be angry, just like I let ‘em cry.” Finally, she asked him to pray with her.

Many of the bodies found had been dead before the storm. Their caskets, placed in above-ground vaults, had washed away with the floodwaters. One man was able to find the casket containing his infant son who had been buried years before, Rich said.

Some of the endings were happier yet. One relief worker who hadn’t known the fate of his wife and daughter heard from them while Rich was there, he said.

Workers from about 15 different government agencies and relief organizations were on hand, Rich said.

“I joked about sleeping with 350 of my best friends,” he said.

He met many who had worked in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, including one man who had lost his daughter at the World Trade Center and now is volunteering for the Red Cross.

The dedication of the volunteers impressed him, Rich said. Most worked 14- to 18-hour days, himself included. He counseled the relief workers as well as the victims, and it was hard not to take on the grief, he said.

Rich was no exception. With one woman, he said, “I remember just breaking down and crying with her, and I didn’t even know this woman. You’re moved by their grief and it becomes part of your grief.”

Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.