Home News Tribune JOHN MAJESKI
Says faith-based groups outdoing the feds
SOUTH RIVER – It’s been said that any form of devastation or violence seen on television can never fully prepare a person for witnessing the real thing.
Recently back from the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast, the Rev. David F. Garretson knows this to be true.
“It had a sense of unrealness,” Garretson said of the landscape in and around Biloxi, Miss., where he spent more than a week coordinating relief efforts with International Orthodox Christian Charities. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It looked like the set of a sci-fi movie.
“The people were the walking wounded,” he added.
Garretson, rector of Saints Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Church on Whitehead Avenue, was flown to Mobile, Ala., on Sept. 8 with the Rev. David Kossey of Manhattan. Garretson said his services had been requested by IOCC because he had received disaster training following 9/11. He arrived home two days ago.
During his stint down south, Garretson worked from Biloxi, helping get trailers of aid and distribute the emergency supplies to the right places.
He said some of the goods received down there had come from IOCC parishes throughout the country.
While IOCC crew workers were providing relief in that region, other faith-based groups worked nearby. Did the organizations ever step on each other’s toes?
“There was too much work to be done for that,” Garretson said, sitting in his office yesterday. Garretson said such workers – unencumbered by concerns such as liability and red tape – had been the only ones to provide assistance there for a long period of time following the disaster. He said he witnessed a lack of leadership by federal workers in Mississippi.
“It’s not a function of being angry, it’s a function of . . . ” he said, pausing, “I just think the faith-based groups are good first responders.”
Much of his day was spent on a cell phone coordinating trucks and supplies, but he said he spent about 30 percent of his time counseling people – even volunteers whose own homes had been destroyed. Garretson recounted images of people who were grateful, but largely “shocked, running on adrenaline.”
As Garretson helped out, victims sifted through the rubble where their homes had been, searching for something to save.
To save himself from letting the hurricane’s effects get to him too much, he relied on his faith, escaped to a novel and kept his mind focused on his current duty.
“You say, “I’ve got to get this truck to this point so people can have food,’ ” he said. “You focus on the task.”
In this “classic case of innocent suffering” – as Garretson put it – people must contribute only requested items. He said clothing and stuffed animals, as many want to give, only become a burden for workers. The best thing to contribute, he said, is money to a reputable charity.
“I thought “This is a good thing,’ ” his wife, Shari, said of when she found out her husband was leaving for the South. “I was pleased and honored my husband’s skill-set was needed.”
With the media’s focus on the devastation in New Orleans, she didn’t expect to hear her husband’s stories of Mississippi.
“I was picturing much smaller (destruction) than he’s described,” she said.
Garretson said he will go back down for a day or two later this month to help new workers get situated.
“I’m still overwhelmed by the experience,” he said.
