Gigi Laudisio

Switchboard of Miami

Miami, FL

 

Discusses the role of Switchboard of Miami's HelPline in helping South Florida residents recover from Hurricane Andrew, which caused an estimated $30 billion in damage in 1992 and resulted in the destruction of 4 7, 000 homes and the permanent loss of 20,000jobs.  Paid staff and volunteers exhibited unprecedented flexibility to handle the sharply increased cafl volume and undertook extensive outreach efforts to connect victims with critical resources and to assist disaster agencies in fulfilling their mission. To better prepare for future disasters, the agency has taken a lead role in cooperative planning efforts with other agencies and has established a secure alternative operations site in case their regular offices are incapacitated (as they were immediately after Andrew's landfall).

Switchboard staff report greater respect among themselves for the value of I&R, which they had formerly relegated to a secondary position beneath the agency's counseling and crisis intervention activities, Recognizing that recovery efforts would have been even more crippled without their critical community resource information, Switchboard is now marketing their referral database and skills much more actively than before-

 

Switchboard of Miami's Helpline has a twenty year history of responding to crises in Dade County.  It has always been at the forefront of assisting the community during traumatic, widely impacting events.  The Helpline's role has been to share accurate information, to dispel hysteria and rumor, and to offer support, counseling, and referrals to those in need-

  In this capacity, Switchboard has attempted to alleviate some of the confusion that inevitably arises when a community is confronted with unexpected and perhaps disastrous circumstances.  Since the Helpline receives over 1 00,000 calls a year, Switchboard is in a unique position to inform, assist, and calm the public.  It is a responsibility that the Helpline has assumed during various crises in Dade County, including the Mariel Boat Lift, several inner city riots, and a series of major layoffs by locally based airlines.

Hurricane Andrew, however, has been a challenge unrivaled in the history of Switchboard's involvement in the community.  For the first time, the Helpline had to close down its 24-hour services and, when we reopened, to modify normal operating procedures.  Like almost all other agencies responding to this disaster, Switchboard rapidly adjusted to the changed circumstances in Dade County by assessing the needs and then finding the avenues to meet them.

 

Dade County and Hurricane Andrew's Impact

 

The evacuation area prior to the storm was mainly lowlying coastal regions.  As Andrew's landfall approached, the area of evacuation broadened to include the cities of Homestead and Florida City.  Almost 300,000 individuals sought safe shelter.

 

Some of the devastation took place in areas where there had been no evacuation warning.  Families spent the night huddled together in bathrooms or closets as their homes were shredded by 150 mph winds.  Homes were left without roofs and walls; the landscape had been denuded of trees and street signs.

 

On August 24, 1992, residents emerged from homes and shelters to find a radically changed landscape and a severely altered reality:

 

most homes in South Dade County were damaged

•  nearly all of the county was without electricity or safe water  

• food supplies were spoiled

• cars were disabled or destroyed

• some people's only remaining possessions were the clothes on their backs

 

• many businesses were damaged, and virtually all of them were closed in Andrew's immediate aftermath in terms of expense and number of persons impacted, this was the greatest disaster ever to strike an urban area in U.S. history.  About 400,000 people live in South Dade, the most heavily damaged area.  Andrew destroyed over 47,000 homes, and the total damage to businesses and personal property is estimated at $30 billion.  Some 20,000 jobs remain lost-1 9 % of the area's pre-Andrew total. 1 The cities in Dade that were most impacted were Florida City and Homestead.  Florida City, a small rural community, is composed mainly of low-income individuals who work in the agriculture industry.  It has a large migrant worker population consisting predominantly of recently arrived Central Americans and Mexicans.  Homestead is a partly agricultural community whose major employer was Homestead Air Force Base, which provided a direct, on-base employment of 8,700 that was virtually eliminated after the storm.

The northern portion of the impacted area (which extends from Kendall to Cutler Ridge) was mainly middle to upper income suburbs.  Most of the population were English speaking or bilingual professionals who were insured.

In contrast, a good portion of the migrant farm workers in South Dade spoke only Spanish or a Central American Indian dialect.  Some of them were working and living in the United States without legal residency status, and most were either illiterate or semi-literate.

Certain populations can be identified as being particularly at risk during disasters.  Qualities of being ill-prepared for change, lacking economic resiliency, and having no secure support system predispose individuals to a complicated recovery.  Vulnerable groups include the elderly, those of lower socioeconomic status, transients, and the unemployed.

Many of Andrew's victims in South Dade met this profile.  At the time, South Florida was experiencing a painfully high unemployment rate of 1 1 %. Dade County attracts transients because of the warm weather-which is also a factor in the area's higher proportion of retirees than the rest of the country.  Most South Florida residents came from somewhere else.  From illegal immigrants to unskilled laborers and elderly widows and widowers, South Dade has a disproportionate number of individuals with little or no support system.

 

 'Beacon Council Market Study-The Recovery of the South Dade Business Community One Year After Hurricane Andrew.

 

The Recoil Period

 

Switchboard's 24-hour Helpline service was interrupted for the first time in over twenty years.  Our phone lines were down for 36 hours because our building was in an evacuation area.  When we were finally able to pass through the National Guardsmen's barricade, we found our offices without electricity or water.

Immediately, we began taking calls through two emergency phone jacks.  With the return of electricity a day later, our computerized phone system started to receive an onslaught of calls unprecedented in our history.

The first six weeks, the Helpline received over 1,000 calls a day-up from our normal daily volume of 275.  The Helpline was the third most called number after the American Red Cross and the Dade County Office of Emergency Management.

Almost all the calls could be categorized as active crisis, with people presenting multiple survival needs-food, water, shelter, and medical attention.  Most were in a state of shock, their emotional affect flat and their rational thinking processes not completely functioning.  Our counselors had to do thorough exploration of their needs and careful, step-bystep problem solving:

• Some callers were in life-threatening situations.  Elderly people with severe health problems called who were trapped and abandoned in their homes.  Fire Rescue workers were dispatched, while our counselors stayed on the line offering support.

• People called from neighborhoods that had been cut off by wreckage and fallen trees.  They needed to know where to walk to for water or food supplies.  O*thers needed to know how to get to functioning emergency rooms to treat their injuries.

• Individuals called in conflict about whether to remain in their uninhabitable homes or to seek safe shelter.

They worried about their remaining possessions and their neighborhoods.  Even those with money to spend had no place nearby to purchased food or supplies. 

And some callers were already expressing grief over the loss of a home, a neighborhood, a pet, a job, or a way of life.

 

How I&R Was Handled

 

During the recoil period, all the resources that Helpline normally referred clients to were either closed or damaged The only agencies operating in full force were those whose mission was disaster response-The American Red Cross, FEMA, the Army, and the Salvation Army.

Many of the normal helping agencies were not able to deliver services to their clients for up to two weeks.  Damaged offices were temporarily closed, or operations were temporarily relocated to premises in the north area of Dade County.

In order to gather critical information for our callers, Switchboard's staff and volunteers began a systematic survey of all possible media channels.  Individuals monitored radio and TV stations for information on meal sites, water and food distribution, shelter locations, and medical assistance.  The Miami Herald changed from a national, newsoriented newspaper to a community guide to human services.

To stay on top of changes, Switchboard became part of the fax loops of the emergency response and governmental agencies.  Everything they faxed to the press they also faxed to us.  They also shared agency-to-agency level information with us.

Since our normal referral book 'Heii)ages (the directory of

 

human services which Switchboard publishes) was all but useless during the first month, the resource staff created a Resource Book and updated it daily.  The basic classifications for services were quite different from normal referrals such as consumer services or income security.  Main categories included:

Basic Needs:      food, water, and ice; housing/shelter; temporary employment; and money/financial (operating banks,

FEMA, American Red Cross)

Health/Medical:             field hospitals, hospitals, special medical conditions (diabetes, epilepsy); Medicaid; temporary pharmacies

Mental Health:                community mental health centers, EAP'S, child abuse referrals, support groups for post-traumatic stress disorder

Services:                electric, gas, water, and telephone utility information; legal services; sanitation; transportation; postal service

 

Typical conveniences such as ice, immediate repair of a downed power line, mail delivery, or a functioning ATM machine became difficult to access.  South Dade County had temporarily lost its modern infrastructure and become a rural Third World community.  Some residents endured without a roof or a cooked meal for months.

 

I&R Outreach

 

It became apparent that Switchboard needed to do information and referral outreach in order to fully respond to the community's needs.  We immediately began to fax press releases to all the media to make the public aware of our full range of assistance and information.

Many of the personnel sent by various disaster response agencies were strangers to South Florida.  To familiarize them with the existing resources in the community, Helr)acies were distributed free of charge to the Army, Red Cross, Salvation Army, FEMA, and all disaster response agencies and ministries in South Dade.

Complications inevitably arose from having volunteers, staff, and administrators new to Dade County trying to provide victim assistance.  At times, clients went without necessary services because of inadequate referrals.  Even the geography proved problematic-since most of the street signs had been destroyed, newcomers had all sorts of problems getting their bearings.

Switchboard assisted the Red Cross by sharing our Hurricane Andrew Resource Book and by consulting with resource personnel at their headquarters twice a week.  And as a United Way agency, we used their fax network to get resource information to the other 71 United Way funded agencies throughout the county.  United Way flew in a disaster expert from North Carolina who had worked in the Hurricane Hugo aftermath.  His arrival marked the beginning of a weekly roundtable of disaster response agencies where information was shared and unmet needs discussed.  Meetings and discussions were constantly scheduled with other helping agencies to maintain a total perspective of what was happening to the community and what services were available.

 

Coverage of the Line and Staff Considerations

 

One of the most challenging aspects of delivering services during the recoil period was coverage of the lines.  It would have been difficult to respond to the call volume under normal circumstances.  With a community disaster, it became critical.

Almost half of Switchboard's staff's homes or apartments had been damaged by Andrew.  Many of us had family members who needed our assistance.  Our volunteer pool of seventy individuals had also endured Andrew's destructiveness.

Switchboard staff from programs other than Helpline were enlisted to help answer the phones.  Their regular duties of family counseling and school outreach became obsolete during a time when people were not leaving their homes and schools were closed.

Volunteers who were not severely affected came down to Switchboard's offices and willingly put in more hours than their normal 3-1/2 hour shifts.  Board members logged time on the line, as did counseling professionals from the community.

The rotary line was expanded from six to ten incoming lines to accommodate the onslaught of calls.  Despite personnel attrition, the line somehow always had at least five counselors providing coverage during critical hours.

Special allowances were made for staff who had been victimized by the hurricane.  They were allowed two weeks off without infringing on their vacation or sick days.  Offers of assistance with goods and services were readily proffered. Schedules were changed to accommodate their family concerns and repair needs.

Because of the nature and volume of calls, Switchboard's staff was experiencing a high level of work-related stress.  Individuals who were accustomed to working a single weekly shift on the phones found themselves on the lines for twelve hour stretches dealing with a continuous flow of callers with multiple needs and crisis level personal problems.  As soon as staff returned who had been out dealing with personal problems, the people who had been maintaining the Helpline were given necessary days off.

Inevitably, a debriefing was critical to assist the staff with regaining equilibrium.  Many had undergone personal crises, and the work environment had become incredibly demanding, hectic, and exhausting.  An expert facilitator in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was brought in to educate and distress the staff through a group modality.

 

The Aftermath

 

Within two months after Hurricane Andrew's landfall, life in the area north of Kendall Drive had returned to normal South Dade, however, is continuing a painful recovery more than a year later.

 

In some of the more rural and poorer areas, electricity was not restored until January of 1 993.  There are suburban subdivisions, trailer parks, and apartment complexes that stand permanently abandoned.  Head south on Highway US 1 to the lower third of Dade County and you will see a steadily increasing number of still roofless, derelict buildings and piles of unidentifiable wreckage.  There have been little new housing starts or adequate rehabilitation of low/moderate cost multi-family units.

The most overwhelming legacy of Andrew is homeless-

ness.  After the shelters closed and the Army's tent cities folded, Dade County was left with little available housing in the South for the displaced.  Rents in the northern part of the county skyrocketed, with landlords taking advantage of a scarce market.  Price gouging on apartments became a nightly topic of local news stations.

  Though FEMA was providing trailers to hurricane victims, one had to be a head of household and have provided the correct documentation.  In an area where many live in extended family and shared rent situations and some are illiterate or speak only Spanish, a number of people were unable to benefit from or negotiate the FEMA system.

In response to South Dade's need for clean-up and volunteers, several thousand single men showed up in South Florida hoping to find employment in wreckage removal, repair, or roofing.  What they discovered was nowhere to live and limited job options, mostly at minimum wage.

A recent study by Catholic Community Services identified over 5,000 homeless people in South Dade.  About 1,500 were members of a family group, and the rest were predominantly single men.

Families, especially uninsured ones, were reluctant to leave the remains of their homes.  Some did not have the money to move from their damaged apartments.  Many stayed in their residences until the entire roof collapsed.  In the South, a large number are still living in substandard, unsafe housing.

The economic recovery has been sluggish in Homestead and Florida City.  With 20,000 jobs lost and many small businesses destroyed or relocated, unemployment remains a critical concern.

 

Another complication is displaced families.  Many families had temporarily or permanently relocated.  Children were suffering the stress of being in a strange environment and a new school.  Some adults were dealing with the complication of moving in with family members in crowded living quarters.  Longer commutes to work were increasing gas costs, repairs, and stress.

 

Nature of Calls to Switchboard

 

Our percentage of crisis-type calls remains at a historical high.  Though over a year has passed, there are still hurricane victims with survival needs: food, housing, and clothing.  Everyday we have contact with an elderly person still living in a car or a mother with five children who has just been pus ed out of the efficiency she was sharing with a family member.

Homeless calls on the line remain at double last year's rate; basic needs are a recurring problem for many callers who have not regained their financial footing.

A rise in societal malaises has occurred in our communityBecause of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the pressure of changed and reduced circumstances, there is marked escalation in maladaptive coping mechanisms.  About six months after the hurricane, when the survival/shock state of mind began to dissipate, people started to manifest PTSD symptoms.  Incidents of spousal and child abuse spiraled.  At the Helpline, we saw an almost 50% increase in victim/abuse calls.  Dade County's domestic violence programs reacted by offering free support groups throughout the community and holding public forums on the issue.

Many family issue callers indicate that alcohol or drug use is a factor in their difficulties.  A frequent complication is that the individual experiencing a substance abuse problem is often in an active state of denial.  Nonetheless, our substance abuse-related calls have increased.  Countywide, the problem has been addressed by a new federal grant which will open two new detox facilities and provide comprehensive outpatient referral.  Switchboard will provide a centralized drug abuse helpline and coordination of initial referrals.

The number of callers presenting depression, anxiety/stress, and somatic experiences (insomnia, appetite difficulties, etc.) has steadily grown.  These are expected reactions because of PTSD and the changed life circumstances in which many individuals find themselves.  Dealing with joblessness, loss of a home, the inconvenience of extensive repairs, or radically transformed neighborhoods, people find themselves grieving but unable to identify their emotions.  After the hurricane, many counseling agencies provided free support groups.  This year, because of the trauma our community endured, National Depression Awareness Day of October 7th was observed by offering free depression screening around the county, with subsequent referrals to individual counseling.  Switchboard provided a centralized referral number for that screening.

Though our call volume peaked in August and September of 1992, it has continued to be higher than last year, with steadily increasing numbers.  This rise can be attributed to two main factors: the exposure our Helpline number received in Andrew's aftermath and the fact that more people in our community are experiencing problems than in the past.

 

I&R Issues

 

Within two months after Andrew's landfall, most agencies were fully operational again.  Though we were able to utilize our normal channels of referral, the way we viewed resources had changed.

Hurricane Andrew exposed service gaps in Dade County that had long been ignored.  Our emergency aid services, hampered by bureaucracies, moved too slowly to adequately respond.  There were few food closets, the community had only about 700 shelter beds, and persons in need of urgent medical or mental health care usually had to wait for an appointment.  

In the aftermath of Andrew, many helping ministries and organizations came down to provide assistance.  Some have remained.  Grassroot charities were formed by individuals and community groups in response to the evident need. Inevitably, our way of including and evaluating resources has become less structured.  If a group is providing food in  the South, we include it in our resource file regardless of its length of existence or whether it has received 501 (c)(3) status. If a church has set up an informal shelter, we will refer less person to it.  In fact, we have found ourselves a home relying on religious ministries to assist hurricane victims entrenched bureaucracies. When people need to eat or have shelter, proximity and immediacy are the criteria.

The altruism of individuals and groups has been a mainstay of South Dade's recovery efforts.  Organizations have formed that do home repair for the uninsured, provide pro bono legal advice, or give free veterinary services.

Even the established agencies have created non-traditional ways of responding.  Dade County's HRS (Human Rehabilitation Services) has formed CHAT teams (Community Health Action Teams) which are dispatched in mobile units to deal with mental health, poverty, medical, and substance abuse crises.  The University of Miami opened a free full-service health clinic at a church.

  The Helpline has changed not only its resource criteria but how it handles information and referral calls.  We have found out that it is rare to receive a strictly I&R call.  Most I&R calls now include a general support and counseling component.  Hurricane victims need something beyond a phone number or an address, even if that is the only need they initially present.  In our monthly statistics, the category Counseling with I&R now represents 60% of our total call volume.

 

Expanded Services

 

Switchboard has also expanded our concept of delivering services.  Immediately after the hurricane, it became apparent that the best modality for assisting disaster victims was crisis counseling with problem solving and I&R.  More cornplex and therapy-oriented approaches would be necessary later, but for those with basic survival issues, active listening and appropriate referrals were the best assistance.

in the past, Switchboard has provided face-to-face counseling in times of community upheaval.  We felt that our Helpline needed an outreach to hurricane victims to adequately respond to the community's needs.  Through the sponsorship of United Way, we were able to open two crisis counseling trailers: one in Cutler Ridge and the other 1 5 miles south in Homestead.  Additional staff were hired to both answer the Helpline and offer counseling at the trailer locations.  Switchboard also assumed responsibility for the 1800 Hurricane Helpline started by the governor's office to deal with donations.

 

Many of the meetings that took place in reaction to the chaos of the early days after Andrew have continued.  Most Committees are geared toward information sharing-an unmet needs committee, a coalition of information and refer ral agencies, voluntary agencies involved in disaster response, and governor's meetings.

And since the hurricane, numerous public forums have been held to permit citizens to voice their concerns to officials and to receive information about obtaining assistance.

 

Community Response

 

Several joint initiatives have arisen to deal with the overwhelming task of moving toward recovery and becoming better prepared for the next disaster:

The County Manager's Office of Homelessness in conjunction with Catholic Community Services first attacked the homeless family problem by establishing a tent city.  This comprehensive approach included day care, job counseling, and mental health assistance.  Unfortunately, the tent city proved too vulnerable to bad weather and had to be closed.  Subsequently, through a coalition of homeless providers and the County, a plan for expanding shelter bed availability to 1,600 beds has been approved.

• Local agencies involved in hurricane response have received FEMA funds to continue their expanded services and to initiate new projects to address postAndrew needs.

• Dade County's Office of Emergency Management has begun to organize different ecumenical communities so that they will be better prepared to assist their parishioners in time of disaster and to participate in the general County disaster plan.

• With the assistance of the American Red Cross, the non-profit agencies who were active in Andrew's aftermath met for an all-day disaster preparedness conference on August 18, 1993.  Workshops were divided according to service delivery category: mental health; food; shelter; health care; I&R; volunteer management; clothing; transportation; and rebuilding.  These workshops resulted in permanent subcommittees that will continue to meet to come up with integrated, cooperative plans for service delivery in time of disaster.  Out of this conference, Dade County's first VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active in a Disaster) was formed.  American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Catholic Community Services, and Switchboard are some of the lead agencies in this organization, which will be a branch of the national VOAD.  All subcommittees established at the conference will report to the executive board of the VOAD. 

 

 

                                   Staff Training on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder  

  In order to better understand the problems Helpline callers have been presenting, staff were provided with training on  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Rachel Cohen, an internationally recognized expert on disaster, offered a clinical  overview of both the societal and the individual impact of trauma.  

Staff members have also been sent to seminars at local universities to enhance their counseling skills in relationship to PTSD. Switchboard's coordinator of training went through  a four week train the trainer course on disaster issues and  teaching counseling techniques.

CONCLUSION 

                          Hurricane Andrew has heightened Dade County's awareness of many chronic but ignored problems. Homelessness  had been a Politically unfashionable issue in Miami for years.  The city did little to address the problem.  The perception was that providing additional shelter beds on top of Miami's tropical weather would create a haven for indigent transients.       

      But when Andrew ripped through and left many middle-class people homeless, the definition of homelessness  changed in public perceptions. The sight of low-income families with small children and nowhere to go on the six o'clock  news convinced many of the need for an organized, official   response. Dade County Office of'Homelessness has worked  on instituting a 1,600 bed shelter bed expansion, and the   County is now the conduit for millions of federal dollars targeted for housing needs.     

Over the last twenty years, Dade County has experienced rapid, often unplanned growth. Many of the newer subdivisions and townhouse developments appear to have sprung up overnight. Unfortunately, that appears to be literally true for some tract communities. Andrew's winds exposed shoddy workmanship, cheap materials, and structures which did not meet building codes.  Homes had gone up with particle board walls, stapled-down shingles,    and plastic straps attaching roofs to walls.   Since the storm, the building code for Dade County has   been carefully examined and strengthened. New housing starts will be monitored and inspected far more stringently, and developers will be more accountable.

 In South Dade, the agriculture industry which was a mainstay of the economy in Florida City and Homestead was severely damaged. With nearly 20,000 acres of farmland rendered untillable, it's doubtful whether this portion of the economy will ever fully recover.  

 Changes at Switchboard

 

Switchboard's Helpline has expanded our definition of services. We're more aware than ever of the need for the general public and responding agencies to be aware of our existence and the spectrum of our assistance. Besides using the media, Switchboard staff spoke to community groups and professional groups and joined committees to increase awareness of Helpline. We designed flyers describing our crisis counseling and distributed them to public service agencies, churches, and convenience stores.

  We also began to perceive our Helpline training in a different light. Switchboard is accredited by the American Society of Suicidology, and we provide our volunteers with 60 hours of classroom training and 1 5 hours of on-the-phone training. In Dade, we have provided training to police hostage negotiators and to graduate psychology students for college credit. In the past, we have usually offered the training as a formal, complete packages on our premises.

Since the hurricane, we have done many abbreviated training sessions out in the community on specific topics:

• Switchboard provided training to the dispatchers who answer the 1-800 Florida HRS Community Health Action Team number.

• We've done training for various groups on active listening techniques.

•  Sessions dealing with community resources have been held with professional groups.  

• With the Coast Guard and many other organizations, we've addressed the topic of suicide.

  Our training outreach has crystallized for us the importance of continuing education for our employees.  At every opportunity, we send our staff to seminars and courses to improve their skills and broaden their perspectives.  In addition, we now realize how vital it is that all Switchboard staff, regardless of their job function, be trained to answer the Helpline.

  After the hurricane, networking became a vital technique for assisting clients.  Networking continues to be an excellent way of gathering information and ensuring service delivery.  Staff participate in a myriad Of focus groups and issueoriented committees devoted to such topics as mental health, homelessness, substance abuse, volunteers, I&R, health care, domestic violence, and-of course-hurricane preparedness.

  Personal visits to agencies have been begun.  In South Dade, our staff visit different agencies to hand out business cards and describe Switchboard's services.  Appointments are made throughout the county to address agency staff meetings on our operations.

  One of the most effective tools for assisting and educating the community has been Helpages, our directory of human services.  Many larger local systems (including Florida HRS, Dade County Public Schools, and Dade County Social Services) use our directory to assist their clients.  Since the hurricane, Helpages has often served as our calling card in introducing ourselves to an agency.

  Another critical evolution in Switchboard's operating procedure is how job duties are perceived.  In the aftermath of Andrew, narrowly-defined job descriptions became meaningless as staff attempted to respond to the crisis as comprehensively as possible:

 

• Workers who had rarely sat on the Helpline became full-time crisis interventionists.

• Everybody shared responsibilities for gathering resource data.

• Many persons who had never worked off-site became involved in outreach efforts as they were sent out to participate in newly-established committees and focus groups.                               

Subsequently, restructuring of staff duties has become less hectic and more directed.  Continuing clinical education is recognized as crucial for everyone involved with the Helpline.  All full-time staff are receiving instruction on training skills and presentation techniques.  Everyone is being exposed to marketing methods and is being assigned outreach projects.  Staff are expected to be alert for new or changed resource information and to share it with the resource department.  By taking a team approach as contrasted to individual specializations, the Helpline is becoming far more professional, effective, and comprehensive.

 

Improved Disaster Preparedness

 

Though our community and our agency managed to survive and even improve in some ways, the contemplation of another disaster is sobering.  Much of our response to Andrew was the result of trial and error.  The stress and disorganization of the first weeks of the recoil period made it clear that preparation is critical.

Switchboard as an agency has been developing its own disaster plan.  One basic component of the plan is an alternative site.  We do not want to ever shut down again due to damage to our offices.  Through an agreement with MetroDade Fire Rescue, our phone lines will be transferred to their bunker headquarters within 24 hours prior to any anticipated disaster.  Our staff and volunteers will answer the Helpline there and will also provide relief to 91 1 operators.  Beyond this, we'll also have a desk in the Emergency Command Room where the entire County disaster plan will be coordinated.

Designated staff are on call to respond to a crisis, and all full-time staff have a list of home phone numbers for employees and volunteers.  Critical to Switchboard's response is our electronic database of resource information.  We maintain a backup copy of the database on floppy disks stored at another location.  In the event of a disaster, the database and the software to run it can be used with any IBM-compatible computer at the alternative site.

 Relationships are being established in the community to ensure that Switchboard can successfully assist not only disaster victims but also other agencies.  We are involved in Dade County VOAD's planning process.  Our staff serve on three committees: I&R; volunteer management; and mental health issues.

We are the lead agency on the I&R subcommittee which is seeking to establish a cooperative agreement between all participating organizations whereby Switchboard would function as the principal information source for the general community and for all agencies responding to a future disaster.  All agencies involved in Dade County VOAD's planning would funnel information to Switchboard regarding changes in their own services and any other resource data they become aware of.  Basically, we would serve as the hub for information about what help would be available to the community following a disaster.

In preparation for this, our resource software program, IR&IS, is having fields added to its record structure to accommodate disaster information for the over 1,800 agencies and programs listed in our database.  At the August 18, 1 993 county-wide conference, a draft of a disaster service provider's directory was distributed by the VOAD.  In the directory, agencies describe what their capacities would be in case of a disaster: services; response time; location; and the number of clients they could handle.  This information will be incorporated into our database and inevitably amended in the event of a community crisis.

Switchboard is also seeking to cultivate critical relationships with government entities.  Both on our own and through the VOAD, we are establishing lines of communication with county, state, and federal agencies.  We need to be part of their plans and on their fax loops to be truly effective.

 

Greater Recognition of the Significance

and Role of I&R

 

Even though Switchboard has been recognized for years as the lead I&R agency in Dade County, we've always been selfidentified as a crisis line.  Our own perception was that I&R was boring, simplistic, and rather routine.  It certainly wasn't material for heart-warming feature stories, nor was it critical in life-and-death situations.

Paradoxically, Switchboard's own biases have been challenged by Hurricane Andrew.  During the first few weeks, accurate information became critical for survival.  Resource staff hectically ran around tracking down leads on food, shelter, and emergency aid.  Referrals were put out in the phone room minutes after they had been obtained and confirmed.  Our callers wanted someone to listen to them; more importantly, however, they wanted to know where to go to meet their basic survival needs.  For callers, the location of drinking water or a warm bed for their children was far more important than an opportunity to vent their emotions.

Another phenomenon was the community's fascination with disaster information.  For two months, The Miami Herald was a daily human resource guide.  Our community became almost addicted to TV coverage of the hurricane and its consequences.  Even after working with victims all day, our own staff would go home and be mesmerized by TV news personalities trudging through tent cities and announcing where the next shipment of Pampers would be available.  Night and day for almost two months, local television stations provided a continuous deluge of information on how to obtain food, FEMA applications, rebuilding material.  We discovered that I&R was not only critical, it was entertaining.

We now have a better appreciation of the critical marriage between our problem-solving techniques and our extensive database.  Our counselors are trained to explore options, to clarify and focus on solutions.  We are now accustomed to coming up with creative solutions to difficult problems.  These skills, combined with our extensive knowledge of local resources, made Switchboard one of the most effective agencies in responding to the disaster.  Quite literally, no one else in the community could have done what we did.

I&R now has a more prominent role in our agency and in our relationship with the community.  We now aggressively market our I&R services to other agencies, offering presentations on resources that include problem-solving techniques.  Every grant proposal we write now cites our unique I&R capacities.  Several government agencies are now negotiat_ ing access to our database.

 

ANDREW'S LESSONS

 

The most crucial lesson that Andrew taught Switchboard s Helpline was the importance of change.  We had become dominated by cautiously defined procedures that worked as long as the community's status quo was maintained.  With the landfall of Andrew, most normal operating methods became inadequate or irrelevant.  Creative strategies had to be pursued in order to gather information and staff the lines.

By becoming less rigid in our policies, we began to realize more expansive ways of delivering services and performing job duties.  To meet the community's needs, it was essential to become actively involved in the recovery.

Outreach to consumers and networking with other agencies have become cornerstones of the Helpline's strategy.  Our vision of the Helpline has grown to include heightened responsiveness and an evolving, progressive role in the cornmunity.  Our I&R services and our training abilities are equally valuable.

Switchboard is now assuming a more proactive stance regarding the problems confronting Dade County.  We are part of task forces, planning councils, and focus groups that address various community issues.  From health care concerns to domestic violence, we are involved.  The Helpline offers a unique overview based on the volume of our calls (projected at 1 20,000 for 1993) and our understanding of all the services available in Dade County.

Andrew has taught us not to be complacent.  Preparedness has become a priority goal for Switchboard.  As an organization and as part of the community, we've learned that we are capable of responding to and transcending almost any crisis.

 

 

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