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The Reliant Astrodome
offered safety and rest to Hurricane Katrina evacuees. |
Houston complex shines as case study for communicating during a crisis
By Richard Andersen,
CFE
It was late in the day on Friday and I was looking forward
to a weekend of G’s (golf, gardening and goofing off). Feeling the buzz
of that relentless Blackberry buzzing, I glanced down to see a familiar
name, long-time friend and industry associate on the caller ID. It was
Russ Simons’s voice, but when I answered, our discussion did not evolve
into the usual topics. Russ was calling to explain that a group of our
industry friends at Houston’s Reliant Park were reaching out for some
assistance in dealing with the evolving Hurricane Katrina survivor
influx. He was calling around on their behalf to try to find some
facility managers who might be available to provide them assistance.
After our conversation, and finding myself somewhat stunned by the quick
turn of events impacting Friday’s plans, I contacted my boss, Padres CEO
Sandy Alderson, to see if it would be appropriate for me to go. Not
surprisingly, Sandy not only encouraged me but also, in fact, suggested
I take others from our organization (including himself) if they were
needed. In checking with the Houston folks, they felt one was enough to
start and so travel arrangements were made and by Sunday afternoon I
arrived in Houston, quite honestly totally unprepared for what I was
about to experience.
Checking into my new home at the Holiday Inn next to the Reliant Park, I
quickly threw my carry-on into my room and proceeded back down to the
parking lot to meet Director of Event Services Juan Rodriguez to begin
whatever assignment he had for me. Before I got to Juan, however, the
real story of Katrina began to evolve. In the elevator on the way down
was a young boy (approximately five years of age) wearing a plastic
wristband. Not knowing what the wristbands meant, I concluded quite
obviously he must be a survivor, so I knelt down to chat with him as we
proceeded to the ground floor.
“Did you come from New Orleans?” I asked. He replied somewhat shyly,
“Yeeesss sir.” Again I asked, “Did you get out with your family OK?” He
replied with a big smile, “Yes!”…then his face became completely sullen
and saddened as if something horrific had re-entered his memory. He
looked at me with wide eyes and a desperate expression I will never
forget, “but I saw my cousin drown.” We looked at each other for a few
moments and I said the only thing I could think to say, “I know that had
to be so hard for you but just know your cousin is ok now, she is with
God and know that you will be ok …God will take care of you.” I hugged
him as we exited the elevator, tears welled up in my eyes and I felt
helpless. He went his way with the adult who had been escorting him and
I looked back over my shoulder at him as I went mine. A million thoughts
and feelings exploding and like so much of the Katrina experience, his
expression and need will forever be imbedded into my heart.
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Hundreds posted messages
seeking
lost family and friends. |
I met Juan Rodriguez under the hotel portico and off we went on the
approximately half-mile golf cart journey through the Reliant parking
lots and on to our destination in the Incident Command Center for the 8
pm Sunday briefing.
The IC was buzzing . . . you could tell immediately there was a sense of
organization in the room but it felt a lot like a major opening event –
it was really organized chaos. Rather quickly, as topic after topic
was
discussed, the reality of their work became much more serious—this was
not an event, this was about people’s lives and clearly this was a life
and death situation for the many people in this room.
Every service agency you could think of and some you could have never
guessed were represented including the Red Cross, FEMA, Houston police,
FBI, State and local governmental officials and staff, Judges, Health
Department, School Board, Coast Guard, Secret Service, Medical officials
and of course the Reliant building management team.
Of all the energy in the room during what turned out to be twice daily
briefings throughout my six days there, I was particularly struck by the
professionalism and focus on the importance of preserving human dignity
for the survivors by the men and women who had come to lead this
process. I learned that first night that beginning with the previous
Thursday, over 26,000 survivors from the New Orleans area had made their
way to the SMG managed Reliant Park.
The leaders coordinating this effort had seamlessly, quickly and
caringly provided sleeping arrangements, food and water, medical care
and all the necessities of life. Over 90,000 hot meals per day were
being served to the survivors. Thousands of evacuees were being
evaluated and treated for a variety of medical needs. There were walls
covered with photos and placards where loved ones were trying to find
their lost loved ones. Relief agencies (federal and private) were
actively addressing the financial and property losses of the survivors.
There were hundreds of moving parts to this process, they were always
evolving and the hedge-pin of it all was a commitment to respect each
individual – it was awesome to see.
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Cots were lined up in
anticipation
of arriving guests. |
Later that evening, to try and gain a better understanding of the layout
and the guest conditions, I took an hour and a golf cart and drove
throughout the 346-acre Reliant Park. As
I tried to take in the magnitude of the rapidly fluctuating needs of
this new Texas "city" (actually became legally known as Reliant City,
with its own zip code), I just had little to no ability to process it
all. On every survivor’s face there seemed to be a combination of
emotions impossible to explain—desperation, gratitude, fear, hope, loss,
depression, anger, and in some cases, even laughter. Looking back, that
drive around created an overwhelming sense of smallness and a question
that continued to evolve for me. What could I possibly do to change any
of this?
The Holiday Inn elevator was a place of personal impact throughout my
six days in Houston. On my third day I met Charlie; he was 12 and hadn’t
seen his mom, dad or two sisters since the day they were plucked off of
a rooftop in New Orleans a week earlier. He was justifiably scared and
worried but more fortunate than most in he had found a New Orleans
neighborhood family friend and was staying in our hotel. As we exited
the elevator on the seventh floor, I stood with Charlie in the hallway
and we talked …I have three children of my own and I felt his fear. I
gave him my name and my room number and told him that if he needed
anything I hoped he would come. The last thing Charlie said to me was,
“Is it really ok if I come if I need you?” I never saw Charlie again,
but I see the image of his hopeful face constantly and wonder how he is.
When I arrived in Houston, many of the Reliant management staff had
already been working 72 straight hours but no one was complaining. They
realized the seriousness of the situation and they responded in a way
that would make any of us in the facility management field proud of what
we do. Requests from a host of agencies were constantly coming in: “We
need golf carts.” “We need fencing (two miles were put up in the end).”
“We need tables and chairs.” “We need gasoline.” “We need a space in
this facility big enough to store and distribute all the donations.” “We
need security for the former U.S. Presidents (or Oprah, Dr. Phil, Chris
Rock, Bill Cosby, etc. …they were all there).” And bicycle barricade was
needed everywhere, instant signage programs, queuing layouts, eating
areas, play areas, school programs, and on and on and on.
They set up a safe and secure room for thousands of guests to receive
their FEMA and Red Cross debit cards requiring hundreds of active
computers and thousands of yards of queuing space. Daily cleaning, daily
feeding, the logistics of thousands of volunteers (36,000 local
Houstonians showed up to help), the list just goes on — there were
hundreds of major variables these men and women constantly managed on
behalf of their facility, their city, ourselves and, quite honestly, the
best part of our humanness.
The medical service teams at Reliant just seemed to fall out of the sky,
organizing and implementing what in some ways must have been similar to
a wartime reaction like the TV show “M*A* S *H”… and they were amazing!
With the sort of devastation many of these Katrina survivors had
experienced came illness and sickness of nearly every variety. There
were rampant infections taking over the complex and this team of medical
professionals, many of them volunteers from all over the United States,
quickly reacted with an efficiency and effectiveness you had to see to
believe. What could have been a tragedy on top of a tragedy was averted
by their great work.
Monday afternoon, while a small group of us were assembling bicycle
barricades, an elderly gentleman obviously blind with two suitcases in
tow and totally out of sorts asked, “Does anyone know how I can get to
the train platform?” This mass transit system is adjacent to the
ballpark parking lot and Juan Rodriguez immediately took the gentleman’s
arm and escorted him to a golf cart. Knowing how busy Juan was, I
offered to drive him over, which I did. As I drove him up onto the ramp
and listened to his story and gratitude for people’s generosity in a
time of need, I felt a sense of joy to think that the best of mankind
was evident to a man who couldn’t see. At the same time I felt a
personal sense of profound sadness at how many times in my life I must
have walked right by people like him who were in need but I was too busy
with my own goals. I asked myself, “What else would you live your life
for?”
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Richard Andersen (center)
was part
of the briefing process. |
As I put my facility manager hat on, I think how different this
experience is from anything I have ever been involved in. It is one
thing for us to have a crowd of people come into our buildings on an
event day as we deal with managing all the variables; this was an
entirely different situation the Reliant management team was faced with.
In terms of event demands on the building staff, this was a Super Bowl
times ten! And what I take away from my time with this team of world
class Reliant professionals is a deep and
profound sense of appreciation for their quiet, humble professionalism.
The life-changing (and in some cases life saving) services they provided
to tens of thousands of survivors simply would not have happened without
their tireless commitment. They continually propped up the evolving
chaos by sorting it out, making sense of it, developing a thoughtful
plan and then communicating and implementing the need into a successful
outcome. They made things happen in one of the most amazing event
management processes any of us will ever witness.
Leaving the hotel to go to the evening shift on one evening I met
Mary. I was actually on the phone with my wife and had a tingling sense
of need come over me as a middle-aged woman in my favorite elevator
stood and stared blankly ahead; I told my wife I would call her back
…“Ma’am, are you ok?” She smiled and said she was – she was “just
weary.” I said, “You know even in times of darkness, I believe God can
use us for good and I’m positive good can come out of all of this. I
really believe everything’s going to be ok.” She looked at me with a
smile and said, “You’re an angel – God sent you here to tell me just
that…I needed someone to just tell me that it’s going to be ok.” Mary
and I walked out of the hotel and continued to chat. Mary shared with me
that her sister had died a few days earlier in New Orleans; she was ill
and just didn’t make it out. Mary was obviously very sad and she
expressed her deeper sadness in she was never really going to have
closure as she understood her sister was being buried in a mass grave. I
learned that Mary was also the director of public health services for
the city of New Orleans and she felt the weight of the world for all the
people her agency had been serving…not knowing where they were or how
they were doing. Now anyone that knows me knows I am a long way from an
angel, but Mary’s follow-up statement gave me an answer to my earlier
question regarding what possible impact could I have to help change any
of the difficulty and despair that had evolved from this hurricane. She
left me with the following gem of a statement, “To the world you may
just be one person...but to one person, you sometimes are the world!"
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Many people played a role
in the
seamless operation at Reliant Park. |
Of all I saw while I was in Houston, what I was most proud of was the
commitment and the performance of the people that worked at the Reliant
Park. Their senior management never blinked; I never once felt a sense
of panic. They just performed and they did so under circumstances that
my words here could just never do justice. To all of us who love and
live this profession, they did us proud and the next time you see one of
them, tell them “Thanks!” They won’t accept it, they probably don’t even
think they deserve it but believe me…they do!
So when you see Shea Guinn, Mark Miller, Jeff Gaines, Juan Rodriguez,
Chris Pezman, Carey Cabla, Tom Collins, Angela Daniels, Rob Fedewa, Kris
Fore, Mike Healy, Tora Martin, Leah Mastaglio, Kyle Oslen, Jason Pedone,
Darrell Simon, on site partners Joe Glynn (Aramark), Rick Welsch (CSC)
and James Pierce (Enterprise Ambulance); plus those who volunteered from
other sites including Anthony Vail (Oakland), Joe De George (Little
Rock), Rose Bernal- Rundle and Lesley O’Quinn (Ft. Myers) and Larry
Wilson (Virginia) and the others I have inadvertently left off, be sure
and tell them “thanks!”
Their efforts, which did so much good and had so much positive impact
should not be lost in the myriad of media stories with their edgy angles
– good does exist in the world…I saw it!
Richard
Andersen, CFE, is executive vice president and managing director of
PETCO Park in San Diego, California. |
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