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| ST. CHARLES PARISH POST KATRINA: HELPING THOSE WHO HELP OTHERS |
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Located just 25 miles outside of New Orleans, St. Charles Parish is one of Louisiana's smaller communities and one of nine parishes that make up the Metro New Orleans area. More than 40,000 people call the 300-square mile Parish home. St. Charles is 21st century industrial and at the same time picturesque - with its modern oil and petrochemical plants and classic southern landscape laced with swamps, bayous, and lakes. When Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast, followed by Rita, St. Charles was spared of any major devastation. But the City of New Orleans, and the adjacent parishes of Plaquemines, St. Bernard, and Jefferson Parish, were not so lucky. They bared the full brunt of the storms' punishing winds, rainfall, and surge. While St. Charles is making a quick comeback, many people, including the public safety professionals who worked and lived in the surrounding communities, were especially hard hit by the storms. Captain Craig Petit, director of the St. Charles 9-1-1 Communications Center, saw the destruction first-hand. "Our recovery effort was pretty quick," he said. "But there are a lot of other dispatchers in surrounding communities who don't have homes to go back to anymore. Your heart just sinks for these people." Bound by a profession of helping others, public safety professionals are a close-knit community of instinctively caring individuals. After the hurricanes, Petit, who is also the president of the local Louisiana Chapter of APCO (the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials) immediately mobilized to aid fellow 9-1-1 professionals who were affected by the storms. "My goal is to help other agencies that were harder hit," he said. "We've collected relief supplies and money, and we're sending it to dispatchers who need the help." According to Petit, who began his career in public safety over two decades ago, the experience has been personally rewarding, but, he says, it's only the beginning. "We now need to concentrate our efforts on helping these families with their long-term recovery efforts," he said. "Some, if not most, lost all of their possessions due to the flood." And, Petit says, families who lived through the worst of the devastation also have to cope with the emotional aftershocks and trauma. That trauma is not lost on many of Petit's own staff of 24 dispatcher/call-takers. Even though they were in the relative safety of the St. Charles back up comm. center (in the basement of the Parish Courthouse) when Katrina hit, many of them took what could only be described as harrowing and heart-wrenching calls from citizens stuck in the middle of the storm. "Our center is located just a few miles from the hardest hit areas - Jefferson, Kenner, New Orleans, and Plaquemines, and also Bernard Parish," said Petit, "so we did receive calls from citizens who were trapped in attics or on roofs in the flooded areas." During the worst part of the storm, it was too dangerous to dispatch rescue personnel. In those cases, there was little Petit's dispatchers could do other than provide assistance and instructions to desperate callers over the phone. Petit is working to ensure that his own dispatchers get the help they need to cope with these extremely difficult situations. He is doing this, in part, by reviewing the recordings of the 9-1-1 calls that came in during Hurricane Katrina. "By going back through the 9-1-1 calls that we received during the hurricane, I've been able to isolate that there were certain dispatchers who needed to get help in the form of critical incident stress debriefing," said Petit. Also called CISD, Critical Incident Stress Debriefing is a special technique that can help alleviate symptoms that can come from exposure to a traumatic incident. Petit says that the CISD process can help reduce the stress, nightmares and bad memories that might arise from handling very difficult 9-1-1 calls. Being able to actually listen to the recordings of the calls that came in during the hurricane has helped Petit determine and prioritize who needs help most. Like many others in his field, Petit is also taking the opportunity to learn from this experience should another storm of such epic proportions strike the Gulf Coast - and Petit's 9-1-1 "Katrina" recordings are helping him to do just that. In Katrina's aftermath, the St. Charles Parish center was flooded with a huge volume of 9-1-1 calls in a very short period of time. "Katrina was the first major hurricane to hit New Orleans in decades," said Petit. "Listening to the recordings helps me better see the responses that were used," he said. "I can make sure that the dispatchers followed through with the protocols and gave people the information they needed, but at the same time didn't tie the phone system up for long periods of time. I'm also looking to see if there are ways we can improve upon and rewrite our policies and procedures to better serve the public in the future." Special note: The Louisiana Chapters of APCO & NENA have joined together to start a relief fund to help the public safety dispatchers and call-takers who were impacted by Hurricane Katrina. For more information on how you can help, please contact Captain Petit at Ptrenee@aol.com. |
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