Why is it important to ask this question? Because the reality is that not all volunteers are “good” volunteers after a disaster. One does not have a right to volunteer. The more complex and intense a disaster, the more specialized training and experience is required.
This basic screening question should start the conversation which determines if there is a role for someone to fill on a disaster deployment. When screening one wannabe chaplain seeking to respond to a plane crash, the question was asked and his response was, “I know why the plane went down. The passengers were sinners.” That “chaplain” was not selected. Out of 3,000 spiritual care professionals who sought assignments in official family assistance centers after September 11, only 800 were selected to support survivors and their loved ones. There were those who applied who said they could only work at Ground Zero, which immediately precluded an assignment there. As a volunteer, you must be open-minded as to where you need to work. Disasters are no place for prima donnas. Patience and flexibility are key attributes that I always looked for when assigning duties and indeed those two words are a kind of mantra in the disaster world.
This chapter discusses how to select the best individuals to provide comfort after a disaster, and how to ensure that the helpers do not end up needing comfort themselves.
Managing volunteers is sacred work. The intention is generally faith-driven and the motivation pure. However, when 250,000 volunteers were deployed during the response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the first four months, a colossal infrastructure had to be developed. For a time, it was humorously described as “the world’s largest adventure travel service.”
Sometimes volunteers would simply self-deploy and show up at the doors of locally impacted churches and shelters. While well-intentioned, the possibility existed that they could end up doing more harm than good. A good volunteer has disaster training, a basic orientation to the disaster, and an understanding of the specific role to be undertaken. The business of comfort is so large now that the government has instituted an integrated command system based upon a hierarchal structure inspired by military operations. Through national VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) partners, the MISS system was developed.
MISS stands for:
M) Member: Are you a member of an organization or group? Or are you a lone ranger?
I) Invited: Have you been invited to respond to this disaster?
S) Specialized training: Do you have specialized training for disaster?
S) Specific task: Have you been invited to perform a specific task based upon a specific need?
When a mass fatality catastrophe occurs in one’s neighborhood, that community joins a club that no one wants to become a member of; however, often there a feeling that these same people have a duty to comfort the next group who are similarly bereaved. Oftentimes this is not helpful. Here is why. One needs to deal with their own shock and grief sufficiently before they can do more than merely commiserate with another family’s pain. While this can be comforting, it is not the same as having a trained grief counselor on-site. This may sound mean, but it is necessary to protect the current mourners.
The implication of loss and knowing how others must feel is problematic. Sometimes, on rare occasions, these former family members and loved ones can be of assistance, but generally, the trauma has been too intense and the need to assist others masks deeper wounds. The altruistic spirit is honorable, but needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. I would caution against sending someone who has personal experience with such catastrophic and traumatic loss to counsel others who have just experienced a similar loss.
It is also important to remember that just because one has entered an official shelter does not mean that everyone there is “safe.” If the community had child sex offenders before the disaster, the community will have child sex offenders after the disaster. Parents and caregivers need to be cautious. Background checks can be run on official volunteers, but it is impossible to run background checks on all evacuees. Nineteen thousand people entered the Houston Astrodome after Hurricane Katrina, and to have done background checks on all of them would have put an undue burden on those seeking shelter. Families must be vigilant and not assume that a shelter is free childcare. This is extremely rare, but there are reasons for concern. There are local police on-call, but in the middle of a disaster, they may be preoccupied with rescue and public safety.
Likewise, the need for childcare does not evaporate in a shelter. Parents may still need to go to work, even if the schools their children usually attend remain closed. The Church of the Brethren, whose national headquarters is in Ashland, Ohio, is one example of an organization that provides critical response childcare (CRC) after a disaster. This small Protestant denomination has developed a niche in disaster childcare. Its volunteers are recruited, trained, and screened and can work with children who have been traumatized or are from homes where family members have been lost or impacted. At the family assistance center in Orlando after the Pulse nightclub shooting, it was heartwarming to see that many of the preschool children had drawn rainbows and those pictures were plastered all over the walls.
At the American Red Cross after September 11, I managed a team of spiritual care professionals that I recruited, screened, and trained from a national pool of professional chaplains. The weeklong trainings were held in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, on the grounds of the US Arsenal, a small military base north of town. I trained rabbis, an iman, Catholic priests and sisters religious, Protestant ministers, deacons, and first responder chaplains from the police, fire departments, and the military. People from all 50 states were represented. Training for mass fatality disasters is clearly anxiety producing and I would do team building between mental health and spiritual care professionals who were curious as to each of their roles in a catastrophic disaster.
At the American Red Cross, I managed a team of more than 200 spiritual care professionals who took turns being on-call for one month as part of a critical response team responding to mass fatality events, whether or not they actually occurred during that time period. They were in charge of the religious or spiritual rituals surrounding death and worked very closely with mental health professionals.
As a trainer at the American Red Cross, I found that hospice workers made good disaster spiritual care responders. Their training and experience—learning how to be with persons and their loved ones who anticipate grief—is transferable to the disaster arena, where unanticipated death through attack or accident precipitates unimaginable emotional and spiritual trauma to loved ones of those who suffer immediate and, in most instances, horrific death. The language is increasingly theological (e.g., “Why did God do this to me/us?”). Mental health professionals may not be comfortable with theological questions and might refer to disaster spiritual care. Likewise, spiritual care professionals know when to refer to mental health.
One of the things that came out of my experience with catastrophic disaster is that hospice chaplains seemed better able to immediately jump into a disaster situation and be of great service, while nonhospice chaplains needed more supervision and coaching. Sometimes there are no answers, there are no words, which may explain or give comfort to those who must endure days and months of suffering and believe in a benevolent, loving Creator. It is vital to be that compassionate presence, to know how to sit and be with those who are terminally ill and with those who love them. This is something that hospice chaplains do on a daily basis and why they were such useful members of my spiritual care team.
Likewise, when catastrophic events occur, the same training and experience, as well as emotional and spiritual support, transposed to the family assistance center can identify and access support for human and material loss. Those who have served in hospices are better trained and conditioned to be with those profoundly impacted by these disaster events.
When there were many victims, like in a plane crash or hurricane, I required higher certification for volunteers who would work more closely with the families. Part of the recruitment and screening for disaster chaplains insured experienced help and competency. I was rigid in requiring board certification or an equivalent to insure that someone with two-day’s worth of training was not sent in harm’s way and might be in over his or her head. There are those with a two-day critical incident stress management (CISM) training that expect to be deployed to mass fatality disasters, but I required board-certified chaplains with a minimum of four units of clinical pastoral education (CPE). CPE-board-certified chaplains generally have a master’s degree in theology or pastoral counseling, as well as 400 hours of clinical training and group process and reflection. I received my CPE training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York Hospital, and New York Methodist Hospital in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Chaplains know how to be with persons of all major faith traditions as well as those who claim no faith tradition at all. Board-certified chaplains have faced rigorous clinical training and small group process to be that compassionate presence while one is undergoing health challenges. Chaplains in the military are trained to be the nonanxious presence on the battlefield. The hospice chaplain as a specialization knows how to respond to disaster. This may not be a welcome or helpful time for a theological explanation or generalization. Why did God destroy Joplin, Missouri, or kill 562 persons in Alabama, Mississippi, and the South in an unprecedented tornadic outbreak in 2011? So what tools specifically does a hospice chaplain draw upon? They use the ministry of presence. Knowing how to be with someone and be the nonanxious presence. Knowing when to let the silences speak and knowing when to advocate for the patient and the family. Recently palliative care has become a specialty of hospice chaplaincy. This makes the chaplain a true advocate for the patient and family with the medical staff. As mentioned before, this makes these chaplains even more helpful in disaster care.
On the other hand, mental health professionals are used to referrals and generally wait to be contacted before offering assistance. Spiritual care professionals are comfortable walking up and starting a conversation. On September 11, there was room for both models. There were episodes of psychologists passing priests in the subway, consoling one another and giving communion.
Mental health professionals may have behaviorial health expertise and know how to refer people for further treatment and medication. They can be licensed clinical social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists. They must have a mental health degree and license in order to volunteer with the American Red Cross and be deployed to areas of disaster.
No one discipline claims to have all the answers or interventions that will suddenly make everything okay and heal all wounds—emotional and raw, spiritual and unforgettable. Somehow the mass fatalities of September 11 made spiritual care an acceptable intervention for mental health associations which, after the attacks, began adding spiritual care organizations and houses of worship as suitable for consideration for those seeking help.
Sometimes a family member may express a desire for a chaplain instead of a mental health professional, saying something along the lines of “I am grieving. I am not crazy.” Prayer had not come to psychology overnight, but religion, for some, ceased to be a pathology. Clients spoke about their grieving and preference to speak with a chaplain. I also had firsthand experience in training all members of our team about the unique aspects of spiritual care and why death from disaster may require the services of a chaplain or local clergy.
Another study published in The Journal of Nervous Diseases, which was completed after September 11, found that having even the most basic disaster training resulted in a lower incidence of compassion fatigue. Despite all the measures to insure compliance, several people who should have been flagged earlier made it through the selection process, thus making deployments more complicated and distracting from providing support to the disaster victims. During Hurricane Katrina, I became aware of a volunteer disaster chaplain who started disassociating on the first day of deployment. This spiritual care professional was a diabetic and should have self-selected from responding. He discounted the stress and hardships of this particular deployment. Unfortunately, he became disoriented and had to be removed from the operation. Another chaplain had recently undergone a hysterectomy and became fatigued on the operation and had to leave. Both chaplains should never have been selected for that particular response operation. The instinct to help, to care, is extremely strong and heightened by press coverage of the pain and suffering of victims. Is it reasonable for someone ten states away to load their car up with ice and sandwiches and take off for the Gulf Coast while the region is still undergoing evacuation? In the general chaos surrounding natural disasters, the prudent course is to join up with an established group like the Red Cross and contact them to see what is needed.
But we also do not want to exclude others too quickly. In one instance, a quadriplegic sought to be deployed to the 2004 cluster of Florida hurricanes. The issue was one of a hardship deployment including no electricity, which was necessary to support this volunteer’s life support and mobility. Instead of rejecting this chaplain, he was assigned to a remote call center operation that gave information and assistance to hurricane clients. Survivors would phone the call center for counseling and other information, such as shelter and food distribution locations. He was able to refer clients for assistance from his home telephone for everything from shelter locations to mobile feeding units. By tailoring what was needed to be done to what he could actually do, we were able to utilize his many skills.
There is nothing like a disaster to bring out the best and the worst in people. Volunteers are there of their own will and sadly may sometimes, just as in corporate America, be subject to supervisors who use intimidation and bullying to manage their staff. Helping others is no excuse for shielding abuse. Sexual harassment is not okay if one is an employee of a large corporation and also not okay if one is a volunteer of a large humanitarian organization. No means no even on a disaster. Sometimes micromanaging and bullying occurs and should be reported immediately. Just as personalities may clash, with the added stress from the disaster, and accompanying pressure to help people, feelings may be hurt or abused. The pressure to comfort sometimes becomes just pressure. Emotions may already be raw and wounds fresh from loss of life and compelling stories of rescue and survival. Prior abuse and trauma may cause volunteers to act out, and, again, close supervision and communication is vital to insure the safety of disaster clients, but also disaster volunteers.
Being a humanitarian and responding to humanitarian disasters is altruism at its best; predatory behavior on these operations is the worst, and in some instances may be criminal. Stress is no excuse. Dying to be loved? Try volunteering for one’s church or temple or talk to a counselor. Take care of your own needs first before deciding to volunteer. Being a spiritual care professional means that one knows how to take care of oneself before taking care of others. It’s the oxygen mask mantra heard on airplanes: “Put your oxygen mask on first and then help put it on others.”
Comforting first responders and enabling them to continue helping is vital work. No one on a disaster response staff is immune from the pressure or the burden of providing comfort. Four days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, a colleague received an unscreened telephone call from someone who hadn’t eaten in days and was wondering when food was going to arrive. After helping literally thousands of people, hearing one voice from the field can be the last straw between holding it together emotionally and providing vital services and feeling powerless to expedite precious foodstuffs in a badly damaged infrastructure. Sometimes it takes up to four days for a postdisaster infrastructure to be set up. It takes even more time to set up services where there is complete desolation, as there was in New Orleans. A good rule of thumb is to assume that you should be prepared to be on your own for the first four days.
But no one is perfect. When I was a youth group minister in a posh Gold Coast parish on Long Island, for an Easter fundraising breakfast for the church youth group, I decided to make bananas foster for 120 people. I simply upped the quantities of bananas and brown sugar and cherry Kirsch for flambéing before spooning over vanilla ice cream. This also is a performance dish and offers the welcome opportunity to ham up the presentation with all ruffles and flourishes.
However, lighting up the abundant cherry Kirsch produced a column of flame that reached up to the basketball net in the church hall, momentarily singeing said net. By the grace of God, the flame was contained and the breakfast went off without further incident. (Note to self: cook in smaller quantities because not everything is safer when amped up to epic scale.) I could have caught fire and it would have been an Easter to remember for all the wrong reasons.
As a spiritual care manager, I always had one nonnegotiable rule among many: respect for all faith traditions and the absence of a tradition (nonbelievers). If you couldn’t adhere to this requirement, then work on my spiritual care response team was simply not going to happen. Board-certified chaplains understand how to be with persons of all faiths or those who claim none. Their training is patient directed and not what are the personal beliefs of the chaplain. Disaster victims are very vulnerable and not fair game for those who seek converts.
I also adhere to the medical tradition of “first do no harm” as a spiritual care professional. I echo the profound ethical requirements of “you are safe with me” particularly after a catastrophic disaster. I had to explain this last point to several Jehovah Witnesses by translating the above statement to a more pastoral example: “No sheep stealing!” In other words, a disaster is not the time to recruit new members to your faith. There are faith groups that have strong traditions and feel that disasters and other calamities are the perfect time to convert new members. From religious cults to large denominations, disaster is seen as an opportunity to expand the flock.
Historically, there have always been “disaster tourists,” those who wish to see the damage from a flood or tornado, mudslide, or wildfire. They may be adrenalin junkies who are addicted to the high of a disaster operation and the “worse” the event, the higher the high. Some go so far as to collect badges or pins or other souvenirs of a disaster operation.
There are those who picked up airplane pieces from Ground Zero in New York City as secret souvenirs of September 11. Those that thought this was okay may have hampered a criminal investigation. I do not exaggerate. There was a police chaplain who picked up pieces of the planes as “souvenirs.” When discovered, this chaplain was dismissed and told he had compromised evidence of the terrorist acts. A brick taken from the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City may seem like a cool paperweight, but no souvenirs from the bombing look good anywhere. If your motivation is simple curiosity, I would say please stay away from an unfolding disaster situation. You are likely to do more harm than good and may even end up needing to be rescued yourself.
“Stay, pray, and pay” becomes a mantra for those seeking to go to where help is needed. It is far better for everyone if one simply stays at home, prays for the welfare of those so profoundly impacted, and sends money which can be used for immediate needs. Those sums of money sent after a flood, hurricane, or tornado can be humongous. Disaster donations are also great for businesses. The philanthropic efforts of big corporations often can be translated into free advertisement and the cultivation of future customers. This is not cynicism. The Red Cross could not exist without corporate support. Every Chamber of Commerce supports disaster response through donations. The Chamber of Commerce seeks to comfort. Whether using links to Amazon or iTunes, or texting to donate, being associated with helping others has lasting benefits to the company.
For example, Walmart has its own disaster operations center. Home Depot and Lowe’s have their own disaster operations centers. They look like NASA control centers. There is enough need in big disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, for everyone both in public and private partnerships. Having ice and tarps available is not only good business, but these big box retailers have disaster response down to an art form. On a personal note, every day during the Florida hurricanes, I would go to the Disney World website to see whether it was open. When I saw that it was finally reopened, I knew it was a sign that the community was getting back to normal. A message of recovery and resilience is when Walmart and Disney World reopen. When Waffle House starts the griddles up, that is also a sign, and a business indicator that things are starting to return to normal. With one eye to the Weather Channel and the other toward prepositioning of disaster needs in staging areas, the public is well served by private enterprise when government cannot meet all needs. Even if the stores have been damaged or destroyed, setting up a tent in the parking lot for tarps and building materials can be a lifesaver for those trying to fix the damage left by the storm.
On the first anniversary of September 11 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, issues arose between several major disaster responses organizations that basically centered about signage and fundraising. A compromise was struck where every other truck would belong to one of the organizations. The basic purpose of the trucks was to give out donuts—donuts to comfort.
Help is not free. In a perfect world, bad things would not happen. But, in the United States, disaster response is not officially a government duty. When a house catches fire and a family is displaced, the Red Cross is called, not FEMA. For large-scale disasters, FEMA only assists with partial replacement costs and assistance. Without the help of the government and a special appropriation, the cost of disaster falls on private charities and big-hearted individuals to respond. Compassion and donor fatigue also become hurdles for individuals seeking assistance. Everyday tragedies without a large loss of life sometimes fall between the cracks.
When those large-scale catastrophes occur, large and small nongovernmental organizations and charities mobilize and attempt to capitalize on intense media reports of colossal suffering and unimaginable horror.
September 11 was the catalyst for the Red Cross deciding to roll out spiritual care as an internal activity in disaster services. The Red Cross had received almost two billion dollars in contributions. Adhering to the theory of finite resources that meant that other charities doing the same type of work would not receive nearly that volume of contributions. (The typical donor profile is an elderly woman that donates a modest sum.)
Already perceived as the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the hubris associated with this move to roll out spiritual care was met quite negatively by many faith-based disaster response organizations. These faith-based groups argued that the American Red Cross was a humanitarian organization and therefore should remain neutral in matters religious.
The American Red Cross’s intention was to base the spiritual care function on the successful, highly credentialed chaplain model that had been utilized successfully for plane crashes and September 11. The American Red Cross enacted this change without consulting the faith-based community, including the Salvation Army, and the community responded by protesting angrily.
If the American Red Cross became a “full-service” disaster response organization meeting all victims’ needs, there was little room for anyone else including the much smaller faith-based disaster response groups. The perception was that a donation to the American Red Cross was not a donation to Church World Service, and eventually might lead to layoffs of faith-based staff in other organizations, which did occur.
With major changes in the leadership of the American Red Cross and other factors, it was not until 2015 when a more community-based model utilizing both community clergy and chaplains working with disaster mental health was instituted. A spiritual care task force operating continuously since September 11 finally was able to successfully advocate and create disaster spiritual care in the American Red Cross. After so many mass fatality disasters and a proven chaplaincy track record, and with the support of disaster mental health, disaster spiritual care became an internal activity of the American Red Cross. The fear that this would bring “religion” into the organization was unfounded after working side by side with the other internal American Red Cross activities.
An example of a spiritual care activity of the Red Cross were the integrated care teams after the Haitian earthquake, which included teams of spiritual care and mental health professionals, case workers, and family health nurses offering services to the families of those Americans killed in the collapse of the Hotel Montana or other sites in Haiti. While I was not in Port au Prince, I was part of the team coordinating the repatriation of the bodies of American students killed in the earthquake from the national headquarters’ command center in Washington, DC.
High-pressure, highly stressful response operations can cause catastrophic health issues among those who respond to such disasters. Those who seek to help have the most exposure to the stress of operations and proximity to the disaster having the most stress. Prolonged exposure to operations without moderation can be deadly.
I lost two close coworkers, and both were highly trained professionals. Susan died of leukemia, and Marcia died of a stroke at her desk. There were also six cardiac events in the disaster response department during the time after September 11. The needs were so great, and the pressures were so strong. Working 18-hour days, with limited down time, lack of regular meals and sleep, eating junk food, and not hydrating, all took their toll.
Let me tell you about one of my dear friends.
Marcia Kovach was an international disaster mental health professional. She was the disaster mental health lead for the Boston chapter of the American Red Cross. Marcia had the compassion, experience, and training on how to support those who have experienced all forms of trauma. I first met Marcia on conference calls from my office in Falls Church and her office in Boston. We were on a planning committee for the first anniversary of September 11, and she was integral at providing support at Logan Airport in Boston for the American and United staff where some of the terrorists had departed. In the days and months after the attack, emotional and spiritual support had been forthcoming for those who boarded and serviced the planes that eventually destroyed the World Trade Center towers.
Airline personnel would remember the faces of the young and old passengers, families and businessmen flying out that morning to California and points west. Marcia supported airline and airport staff, and was also integral to responding to every Boston area disaster, including the death of six firemen in Worchester. There is a haunting photograph of Marcia taking flowers to a spontaneous shrine for the firefighters in Massachusetts.
Marcia and I would later work together at national headquarters after her promotion. We were tied at the hip and knew part of our job was to interpret emotional and spiritual care issues to the larger disaster services, but also to the national organization itself. We took every opportunity we had to illustrate what we saw as a chance to educate staff and bring another generation of managers up to speed in neutral and humanitarian organization.
We shared our story of collaboration at family assistance centers. When a client would start using religious language, for example, “Why did God allow this to happen?,” moving a coffee cup was used as a sign to alert spiritual care to come over and be introduced. Likewise, when a client started disassociating and a mental health referral was needed, the coffee cup would move to the other corner of the table. This successful pairing of mental health and spiritual care professionals insured that clients were heard and their needs for comfort met.
Marcia and I could be silly and serious. We knew how to check one another for the management pressure of national response operations where the needs were immense and our responsibilities of recruiting, training, and staffing service delivery sites, such as family assistance centers, were unceasing. I had a three-foot-tall, giant inflatable yellow marshmallow Peep on my desk thanks to my not-so-secret Peeps obsession. When times are hard, you need something soft. If there were working press or VIPs touring the disaster operations center, the Peeps would be promptly deflated.
We cohosted an ice-cream social in the disaster operations center. We bought fresh flowers and put them on everyone’s cubicles. When our colleagues were glued to their desktops and phones, we handed out water bottles.
Sometimes, a drink of water can be quite comforting.
But one day, Marcia started to slur her words on a telephone conversation several cubicles behind my own and called out for help. By the time the ambulance had arrived, she could no longer talk. Her eyes were very expressive. I told her we would call her son and daughter and I would meet her at the hospital.
Marcia never regained consciousness. She was only fifty-four. Her memorial service was one of the few ever held at the national headquarters and contained tributes from many of her international disaster mental health colleagues. Her colleagues had come numerous times to Washington, DC, to help birth disaster spiritual care, as nursing had done a decade before to help integrate disaster mental health into the Red Cross.
Then, there was Susan, the national disaster mental health lead. Susan had her doctorate of psychology and had worked both in private practice and in public health policy. Susan was British and had met her husband at Danceteria in New York City.
There was something about me, she felt, that she didn’t quite understand, and I felt it had something to do with the fact that I was ordained clergy, as she was an atheist. We spoke about science and intelligence, but September 11 threw the rule book out the window.
I believe it had something to do with mass fatalities.
I have written before that death is more than a mental health issue, and what separates spiritual care professionals from our mental health colleagues has to do with the rituals that we provide.
Mental health professionals generally wait to be contacted for assistance. Spiritual care professionals are comfortable walking up and starting a conversation. On September 11 there was room for both models.
Counselors would retell stories of family members whose loved one was on the 102nd floor and wouldn’t be able to get out and how some of their last words was the expression of love for one another.
There were images of falling people.
There was the sight of firemen carrying the dying priest who had been struck on the head with debris.
Then the buildings fell.
No one discipline claimed to have all the answers or interventions that would suddenly make everything okay, heal all wounds—emotional and raw, spiritual and unforgiveable.
Somehow the mass fatalities of September 11 made spiritual care an acceptable “intervention” for mental health associations that, after the attacks, started adding spiritual care organizations and houses of worship as suitable for referrals for those seeking help.
Eleven out of twelve suggestions may have been for mental health referrals, but the twelfth was for spiritual care. Prayer had not come to psychology overnight, but religion, for some, ceased to be a pathology.
Clients spoke about their grieving and preference to speak with a chaplain and that they were not crazy and did not need to speak with a mental health professional.
Chaplains also were not social workers.
Susan helped establish a strong spiritual care presence both at headquarters and in the field for the American Red Cross. She mentored disaster spiritual care and welcomed it into the national mental health organizations headquartered in Washington, DC. Because Susan endorsed working together, it gave “permission” and “cover” for other organizations to consider its value beyond disaster response but also in pastoral counseling and emotional care.
It seemed that a plane was crashing every three months during the late 1990s and early 2000s. At the Red Cross, the federal government was working to provide additional disaster support resources, mandating in the 1997 Federal Aviation Family Assistance Act for emotional support and a suitable memorial service. Since the Red Cross was a humanitarian organization, a partnership with professional chaplaincy organizations came into being and one result was the Spiritual Care Aviation Incident Response Team (SAIR). It was composed of disaster-trained professional healthcare chaplains who would be deployed immediately after an incident and collaborate with disaster mental health to provide emotional and spiritual support and a suitable memorial service—something chaplains were excellent resources for and did not compromise the Red Cross’s fundamental principle of neutrality.
Jane Morgan organized this for the Red Cross and trained and recruited its first members and team responses. Jane was my mentor after I received my SAIR training in the weeks after September 11. I came to work at national headquarters to facilitate management of the spiritual care team that was in an extended deployment in New York City after working also in Shanksville and Arlington.
Jane also needed assistance organizing the rollout of disaster spiritual care as an internal activity of the Red Cross, in part due to all the mass fatality air crashes and the September 11 terrorist attacks. Jane was sensitive to spiritual care issues but could advocate for us due to the number of 9/11 dead.
Before changes in senior management and external pressure, and anticipating future terrorist attacks and repeated catastrophic natural disasters, a new template was developed—the critical response team. Likewise, there was a spiritual care response team component with advanced training in dealing with any number of mass fatality disaster scenarios—either natural or human caused. Jane managed health services, mental health, and spiritual care for Red Cross disaster response. Thousands were helped after catastrophic events due to her leadership and advocacy.
I’ll always remember Jane calling us together to work on a plan for setting up and staffing 1,000 shelters for 1,000 persons in each shelter before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. The scale and scope of disasters after September 11 necessitated cooperation between federal government and faith-based disaster organizations and the Red Cross. No one organization or agency could manage these large-scale mass fatality disasters.
Jane, Susan, and Marcia were key figures for the Red Cross and the nation in the provision of emotional and spiritual care and managing comfort.
Local television stations kept broadcasting through the night at what appeared to be floating fires in the dark ocean at the crash site of TWA flight 800 off the coast of Long Island that quickly transitioned from a rescue operation to a recovery operation. Many families got their updates from the news outlets. There were no advance briefings. Everyone got the bad news at the same time. There was no privacy or decorum.
TWA flight 800 families demanded that the government do something to protect them from the chaos, and the Transportation Disaster Family Assistance Act was passed and signed in 1997 setting up victim support tasks for the various government and nongovernment agencies. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) became the lead agency unless the incident was a criminal event and then the FBI took over.
Chaplains and other religious professionals are the so-called death experts. Part of the act called for a suitable memorial service, and who knows more about memorial services than clergy? Due to the separation of church and state, the act designated an appropriate nongovernment agency (like the Red Cross) to coordinate an acceptable memorial service.
The Red Cross then partnered with the professional chaplaincy organizations whose membership is trained to work with members of all faith traditions as well as those who claim no tradition. These chaplains were primarily hospital based and knew how to intervene in critical situations like emergency rooms, hospices, and expirations. Most of the chaplain’s clinical skills transferred to the disaster arena.
The NTSB responds to all transportation accidents including aviation, marine, rail, highway, and pipelines of significance. They are the lead federal agency for accidents. The NTSB is quite extraordinary in handling disaster family assistance in a no-nonsense way. Their priorities are the bereft families and they seek to protect their dignity and trust. They are a remarkable government agency that works with great professionalism and, most important, discretion.
The Office of Victims Assistance (OVA) is another extraordinary government agency and works closely with the NTSB and other agencies when the disaster is determined to be a criminal event. The federal building bombing in Oklahoma City or the Marine barracks in Beirut all had the assistance of a team of disaster family assistance experts working with remaining spouses and other family members.
This agency tracks the search and capture, arrest and prosecution for family members that receive periodic updates, some for over twenty years. For PanAm flight 103, which was both an aviation and criminal disaster, both the NTSB and OVA/FBI were profoundly engaged.
If an American citizen is killed, whether domestically or internationally in a criminal act, there will be OVA presence.
Here are some questions that are helpful when selecting spiritual care volunteers.
Describe a situation in which you helped someone. How did the person ask? What did you understand to be the need? What did you do?
What is the best way to help someone in grief?
How do you know when you need help? Whom do you ask for help? What would help you?
How would you help someone whose religious beliefs are different from yours?
What do you know about your own limitations or blind spots?
Do you understand the importance of not using this as an opportunity to proselytize or sermonize? Are you related to or acquainted with anyone who was on this or any other similar critical incident? Have you ever been convicted of a crime? Describe a situation in which you experienced stress and what you did to handle it? Why do you want to work on this relief operation?
Questions by disaster mental health: Are you currently under the care of a mental health provider? Are you currently taking any psychotropic drugs? Have you ever been hospitalized for a mental health illness? Have you recently experienced a traumatic event or loss? Are you in the process of grieving for any loss?
Note: While at the Red Cross, I deployed spiritual care chaplains to mass fatality incidents like plane crashes including one in Lexington, Kentucky, 2006. A Delta COMAIR commuter jet crashed early one Sunday morning on takeoff, and I sent seven chaplains to organize spiritual care along with the other Red Cross victim support tasks. There were fifty people on the plane that went down the wrong runway and only one survivor. What follows is an email I wrote to the spiritual care team upon their return home from the disaster. It’s always important to say thank you and recognize the impact and sacrifices of the comforters.
Twenty-nine seconds. That was all the time they may have had. You have met their families and friends. You have been a compassionate presence just being there in Kentucky. You have grieved with them. You have protected them, and kept them safe. You have lifted them up when they collapsed—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. You dropped everything in your personal lives last Sunday and Monday and traveled to be with them.
Your families and colleagues back home may never realize just how much you did. Your flexibility. Your patience. Making immediate assessments and developing a plan. Working as a team with the Red Cross Bluegrass chapter and others on the Red Cross critical response team. Supporting the efforts of the National Transportation Safety Board and Delta Airlines to provide immediate services and support to those who faced such catastrophic, unanticipated grief.
We watched the line of blue buses on television and in the newspapers. You were there to witness through your own eyes the final resting place of this tragedy. The burnt grass and broken trees as you held families and prayers in your hearts and hands.
You empowered and facilitated local voices to remember and pray in an opera house for the memorial service.
Everyone said that this event ended the safest period in domestic aviation history. You know what it was like to hear those words, and you were with those who might have heard those words at the most ultimate cost. I can’t imagine the unbearable pain.
You now stand with your peers who stood with families in Kirksville and Charlotte, Malibu and Far Rockaway, Little Rock and Shanksville, Pier 94 and Aspen, Arlington and Newport, Boston and Eveleth, Minnesota. Your service was phenomenal; yet, connected to what we all do every day back home at the medical centers where you serve.
So, thank you for going to Lexington. Thank you for being there for your neighbor.
Play some movie soundtrack music that is light and uplifting.
Find some sunlight to sit in.
Help a dog that is trying to sit in your lap while typing.
Remind others to take their medication.
Silently say a gratitude prayer.
Silently give a blessing.
Find beauty where you are and call attention to it.
Help remember and develop rituals of meaning.
Give glory.
Give something.