Almost every day, it seems, disaster strikes somewhere.
Whether it's an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a tsunami in the Indian Ocean, or flooding in Tennessee, Americans are bombarded by a relentless torrent of calamity.
With the lightning speed of the Internet and a seemingly endless eagerness for information, people are finding out about disasters both manmade and natural with alarming alacrity.
Five years ago today, it was all about Katrina and how New Orleans was almost completely destroyed. More recently, the news has focused on flooding and landslides in Pakistan, where it is estimated that 14 million people may be displaced or seriously affected.
Before that, in May, it was the flooding in Tennessee, where 13 inches of rain caused untold damage throughout the south. And before that, the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
If a silver lining can be found to all of this, it appears that the disasters, combined with an almost instantaneous mountain of information about them, are fueling a surge in volunteerism, a trend that started with Katrina and continued throughout the onslaught of disasters that have followed around the world.
When the earthquake hit Haiti last winter, numerous relief organizations and churches from the Merrimack Valley and Southern New Hampshire offered their assistance. And the floods in Pakistan led Andover's Anwar Hakam and others to form the Pak Flood Relief Group to raise money for those victims.
"We have seen an uptick in interest since Katrina and Rita hit Louisiana," said Bob Wartman, chief emergency services officer at the American Red Cross of Massachusetts Bay. He noted that he always groups the two hurricanes together because they hit just a couple of weeks apart — one hammering New Orleans, the other, Rita, hitting the western side of the state.
As such, the need for volunteers was taxed beyond the capacity for any one agency to respond.
"No one was able to handle the size and scope of Katrina and Rita, not the Red Cross or any of our partners," Wartman said. "It was a challenge for all of us."
The result was not just an increase in interest from volunteers, but an increase in coordination among different organizations.
"We were all talking, but Katrina and Rita gave us a wake-up call that partnerships are the only way to do everything you need to do," Wartman said.
Over the last five years, many hours of planning have gone into establishing and firming up partnerships between the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, churches and other religious organizations, government and non-government disaster agencies. The result is a more coherent and cohesive response to disasters, making things better for the victims, but also improving the experience for volunteers.
"When you respond with an organization, your eyes are really opened up to how much it takes to respond," Wartman said. "To provide meals for 200,000 people, you can't just go to McDonald's and order 200,000 burgers. A lot goes into the response. When people see the outcome of that planning, they get excited and interested in how it all works. And they want to be part of it."
That's what happened to Pam Nolin of Haverhill, who first volunteered with Katrina relief efforts and has been at it ever since.
Just before she retired six years ago, Nolin took a Red Cross course on emergency management. Her intent was to join the local emergency management services agency to help out in her hometown.
About a year after she retired, however, she got a call from the Red Cross in Boston saying they needed her to go to New Orleans as a volunteer to help with relief efforts there.
"They said, 'You need to leave tomorrow,'" recalled Nolin. "I said, 'You have the wrong number.'"
They quickly explained to her that after she took the Red Cross training course, her name went on a national list of volunteers who can to respond to disasters.
"They said, 'You can do it,'" Nolin said. "I left the next morning, and I've been doing it ever since."
Over the last five years, Nolin has been to California to help people affected by wildfires, and she's been to the South several times, most recently a trip to Tennessee to help with flood-relief efforts. Locally, she's been on-hand in Lawrence and elsewhere around New England to help victims of fires and floods. In 2005, she spent months in Louisiana and Texas, helping victims of Katrina.
"I have a passion for it," she said.
Her volunteer work has introduced her to new people from all walks of life, and has cemented friendships with co-workers and disaster victims.
"On a personal basis, it makes me not sweat the small stuff," she said. "It's changed my outlook on what we think are hard times or bad times. I look at what some of these people have been through and realize my life is so mundane. I have met some incredible people, Red Cross volunteers and clients that I work with — people that I'll have as lifelong friends."
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