KATRINA CONTINUES Maine Rep. Eder’s report from Louisiana BY SAM PFEIFLE

Recently, Maine's Green party state representative John Eder (Portland) trained with the Red Cross to be a volunteer, hoping to head to the Gulf Coast area affected by Hurricane Katrina and be of some assistance. Well, he got what he wanted, shipping out with a handful of other Mainers last week for jobs unknown. As he was packing up, we asked him to check in with an email or something when he got down there. On Friday, September 23, my phone rang:

Hey, Sam, it’s John Eder.

Hey, wow, John — didn’t expect to hear from you.

Yeah, well, I normally wouldn’t have had time, but there’s a tornado watch on, so I don’t have much to do.

What’s it like down there?

Well, I’m living in a jail.

A jail? What jail?

A town called Kenner. The police here have opened up their jail cells to us because they don’t have plumbing here, so they haven’t been in a position to lock anybody up in the cells. It’s not humane conditions for prisoners, you know, but apparently it is for us, so we’re sleeping four or five to a cell. The doors are open and we’re in cellblocks — and I happen to be in Green block.

That’s pretty funny. So, you’re ducking out of Hurricane Rita right now?

Well, actually tornado ducking — the sirens are going off right now for tornado watch. They’ve been going off for the past half hour or so, from tornados set off by Hurricane Rita. And maybe you know, the levees are topping over. We’re right outside of New Orleans. We’re actually not making any runs to New Orleans, though. We’re a kitchen called Kitchen 13 that is a staging area for food to be prepared and then put on canteens that they call "ERVs." And I’m driving one of these ERVs with a crew of three people and we go out to the affected areas and we get food — hot meals if we can, or MREs — and water out to people a couple of times a day.

Red Cross is really just overwhelmed. It’s bigger than anything they’ve ever done and it’s just beyond them. Someone else from this kitchen drove up and found somebody from a rural area a couple of days ago who hadn’t seen anybody yet since the storm, and hadn’t had any supplies since the storm.

Who is in charge of where you are?

The Red Cross sends us here, and FEMA is here sharing jail cells with us. The National Guard is here. The Red Cross has set up this kitchen for feeding down close to New Orleans. One truck does go into the industrial levee, which I guess has been breached again, just now. Um, one truck does go into the industrial levee to feed the construction workers there. But, other than that we’re not feeding in New Orleans.

How far are you from New Orleans?

About 12 miles from New Orleans, or so. I’ve been into New Orleans, one afternoon, and went to go visit with some Greens there. They’ve set up Food Not Bombs kitchens there, in their neighborhoods. The only way we were able to get in was because of our Red Cross credentials on the car. Otherwise, it’s very hard to get in and out.

You say it’s hard to get in and get out. What’s the attitude toward the people who are actually in the city, like the Greens?

Well, I heard the mayor say on the radio when I was driving in the truck yesterday, that it’s depopulated. So they don’t really consider those people to be there at all, basically. He was asked the question if there was potential for loss of life due to Rita. He said no, because we’re "depopulated," but there are definitely people in there.

My friends won’t leave because they’re suspicious that they won’t be allowed back in, even though they live in neighborhoods that haven’t been flooded. Their fear is that their places will be condemned or bulldozed, that they won’t be allowed back in. In some other whiter parishes, people have been allowed to go in, assess the damage, see if there are any valuables that they could collect. But that hasn’t been the case in New Orleans, particularly in the ward — people haven’t been able to go in and collect their stuff.

Does someone prescribe a route for you when you’re in the canteen? How do you know where to go, where to drive?

We have these prescribed routes that we hit all the time. Then every now and again we hit a new spot because we may have heard that either the National Guard’s given out ice there, and we can pick up business there, or that there’s a place that a lot of people have been gathering to line up for something or other. Sometimes we’re outside of a supermarket and that’s kind of surreal, you know. There’s a supermarket stocked with food and open, but we’re parked right outside. But there’s a lot of people who are waiting on this assistance and the government hasn’t really stepped up and they don’t have any money and they don’t have any way to even buy groceries.

You say there are supermarkets with food open. Are there other businesses actually open?

Here in Kenner, it’s spotty. Since I’ve been here, traffic lights that haven’t been working are coming online and going offline and stores that haven’t been open are opening, but now today they all closed and have battened down the hatches and boarded up their windows, a lot of them. But it’s spotty. It’s weird. Because civilization is beginning to reestablish itself, but it’s still really bad. It’s just a huge disaster.

And the people here are really stressed. They’re in for three-week stretches, and they’re working 14-hour days. There’s a real push to just keep going, keep going. It’s pretty intense. It’s kind of like an episode of Survivor in here.

I’m sure. You’re working 14 hours a day — but what about the other 10 hours? Are you guys just drinking yourselves to sleep at night? What’s the social atmosphere like down there?

Yeah, people have some beers or they just go to bed. People just go to bed when they’re done working. That’s what we’ve been doing. You know, the cacophony of snoring and farting and cell phones going off. You get used to it a little bit. I’m averaging four hours of sleep a night, which is what I usually get, anyhow, not so different really. But, yeah, people just crash. They maybe have a beer and then you’re drunk because you’re so damn tired. It’s really hard working people, a lot of working-class people who are the face of this organization. They’re people who — really, like myself — who have made financial sacrifices to come here, not just the sacrifice like they had to leave their company or whatever, but who maybe had to borrow some money to pay the bills while they were gone.

That’s really just moving, to see the people who are down here, and it’s really gratifying, too, to be connecting directly with people. It’s just what I wanted to do, connect directly with the victims down here. And they’re just super appreciative. But people are freaked out down here. They went from feeling like storms never hit here, the tornados always missed, to now the slightest inkling that it might come here they get really scared.

How are these people spending their days? They've got no jobs, they've got no money — how do they fill their days?

I think they’re spending a lot of their time sitting in line waiting for supplies, or on the phone trying to get in touch with FEMA or trying to get in touch with the Red Cross. FEMA puts on these interim roofs with blue tarps they call FEMA roofs, so they’re on line for their FEMA roof, or they’re on line for ice from the National Guard, or they’re on line for some water, or they’re on line waiting to get some assistance from the Red Cross — so I think they’re spending most of their day going from one queue to the next.

And what are those lines like? I know how everybody hates to stand in line.

With the victims I’ve been really impressed with their patience. Nobody’s been scuffling getting the food from us. I think this really tends to bring out the best in people. It’s pretty inspiring really. There’s something about this time now that’s so kind of tender and moving about the way that people are interacting with each other, that you almost don’t want it to end. There will be this day when traffic starts to just go by, and people don’t stop to talk with one another and see if they need help, I guess, and that will be "better." It’s kind of an interesting time, but I think people are going to heal up just fine.