“Counselor Comforts Storm Survivors”

(999 Words)

(Published on December 17, 2005, in the Door County Advocate, a Gannett publication)

Many people dream of doing noble things during their lives, but for most, those dreams never materialize. Rudy Senarighi longed to do volunteer counseling for many years, but his family responsibilities and full-time career never permitted the opportunity. Destiny knocked on his door, however, shortly after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita roared across the Mississippi coast.

A former Minnesota native, Senarighi is now retired but worked as T.J. Walker Middle School’s guidance counselor for twenty-five years. In late September, he met another retired friend who suggested that he give the Red Cross a call.

Consequently, Senarighi decided that this was the time to use his professional skills to serve those who needed him the most. He followed his friend’s advice and applied to become a Red Cross volunteer.

“This was my first Red Cross deployment and the first disaster that I worked with,” Senarighi said. With only a few days’ notice, he flew out of Green Bay, alone, on November 9^th and returned on November 23^rd. Wisconsin was heavily represented in the Gulf, but Senarighi was the only volunteer leaving from Door County at that time. He arrived at his Memphis connection, puzzled at the sight of so many people heading to Gulfport, Mississippi. After all, what was left after the hurricane? He soon discovered that they were Red Cross volunteers from across the country.

Senarighi remembers feeling “glib and upbeat,” thinking he’d be facing a normal counseling situation. Terry MacDonald, who had volunteered in Baton Rouge, told him to expect a numbing level of destruction. When asked to describe his initial reaction to the hurricane devastation, Senarighi said, “There aren’t words. It looks like the pictures of Hiroshima after they dropped the atomic bomb. It’s just gone—it takes your breath away.”

Upon their arrival, the volunteers were shuttled to a Navy Seabee base where they bivouacked with 600 other volunteers. As they drove through the area, Senarighi noticed roofs blown off, signs and windows broken. It looks kind of bad, he thought.

The next day, he traveled to Moss Point to connect with his first team and was struck by the condition of the trees. “Whatever trees were standing were full of clothing and plastic—it looked like when kids ‘TP’ around here. Underneath, there was nothing. I couldn’t believe it,” he said. The conditions they encountered at Pass Christian the following day were even more eerie. The hurricane’s eye had come ashore, there, and Senarighi described the scene as “just incredible. He heard motors running, but “there were no birds, no animal sounds.” The sour smells of decay wafted through the air—people called it “Katrina perfume,” but he saw no dead bodies or looting.

Senarighi was one of twenty-two other counselors who worked with mental health issues, and the togetherness they shared served as a support network against the stress they endured. They attended morning meetings together, traveled to outreach as a team, and discussed their experiences at day’s end. Together, they rode in “ERV’s” (Emergency Relief Vehicles) to deliver food and blankets to people. “We went out as a 3-person team: a social worker, a guidance counselor like me, and a medical person,” Senarighi said. They searched for victims who needed comfort.

Emotion tinged Serarighi’s words as he told the story of a man who tried to stay with his home “until the very end.” As the story unfolded, fate seemed to dictate each move he made, from the moment he escaped through the roof of his Jeep to the moment he stood ankle-deep in a neighbor’s attic, praying for the water to recede. For a while, he didn’t think he would survive. He had rescued a woman from the water and they struggled against a 20-foot storm surge by hanging onto a refrigerator and some uprooted trees that floated by.

Eventually, the trees parted and the refrigerator bumped into the second story of a house. The man broke a window and discovered five people stranded in knee-deep water that continued rising… In desperation, they climbed into the attic and watched through the window as a house twisted off its foundation and hurtled toward them. It slammed into a second house and stopped.

The victims needed to share stories like these, but Senarighi didn’t have to say much to comfort them. “I was impressed by how positive and resilient they were. Most of them said, ‘I’m doing Okay—we can either whine about this or get on with our lives, and whining won’t do any good.’” Sometimes, they refused offers of aid and encouraged the volunteers to “find someone who really needs it.”

There were plenty of people to help. In fact, trying to cope with the sheer volume of the disaster meant that volunteers couldn’t afford to devote any quality time to victims. Like a surgeon in a M.A.S.H unit, “you had to move on because there were so many people.” Still, “the people down there couldn’t say enough good things about the Red Cross, and it makes you feel good,” Senarighi said.

Despite Red Cross warnings that this deployment would be a life-altering experience, Senarighi didn’t feel that way. He had already faced and conquered a greater adversity: cancer. If he hadn’t had to cope with this disease, the hurricane deployment may have impacted his life, more. Conquering this personal crisis made him realize how fortunate he really is and changed his outlook on life. “There are things you have control over and things you don’t,” he said.

One of those things involved learning how to cope with the disaster. With a crisis so fluid, flexibility became paramount because logistics and tasks often changed. Even the street signs disappeared, so locating victims often proved challenging; sometimes, they couldn’t be found. Senarighi insisted he would do it again.

He advises potential Red Cross volunteers to “take the training, don’t think you’re going to change the world, and be satisfied with baby steps. It’s like eating an elephant—you don’t do it all at once.”