Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 3, 1993 TAG: 9308030318
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Usually, she's been told, she would walk seven miles to reach the river's edge.
But this is Winfield, Mo., where the Mississippi spilled over weeks ago, turning a levee of sandbags to mush.
"All you can see now are housetops and signtops," said Layman, of Vinton. "It's hard to imagine how badly people are flooded."
Layman, who works as a nurse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem, is one of 14 American Red Cross volunteers from the Roanoke Valley who've left their families and 40-hour work weeks to lend a hand in the flood-ravaged Midwest.
Layman remembers the Roanoke flood of 1985.
"There is no comparison," Layman said, the sounds of activity at a shelter for displaced flood vicitims crackling through the phone. "In Roanoke, people had the same problem but they could get back in and start cleaning up. These people have no idea when the river's going down; when they can go home.
"Some have nothing to go back to."
Winfield is a tiny city 60 miles north of St. Louis with a population of 597, most of them low-income, said Cindy Hemmer, Winfield city clerk. A railroad track divides the city into a distinct east side and west side, she said.
The east side, Hemmer said, is completely flooded. Half of the city's residents were forced to evacuate their homes, including Hemmer, whose one-story home is filled with five and a half feet of water.
Many Winfield residents had no place to go, Hemmer said. Apartments are scarce, as is vacant land. The Federal Emergency Management Agency found several mobile homes for people but can't find places to put the homes, Hemmer said.
"The sad thing is the river hasn't crested yet," she said. "We're trying, doing what we can. We've had lots of help from a lot of caring people.
"We probably wouldn't have made it if it hadn't been for them."
Every three days or so, Tom Brown will squeeze in a call to his family in Franklin County. The hours spent coordinating mass care for five Red Cross districts in the St. Louis metropolitan area, are erratic. Finding time to phone home can be difficult.
Brown, manager of the Red Cross' Roanoke Valley chapter, has been in St. Louis overseeing food and shelter efforts - the 20,000 meals a day, the 55 emergency response vehicles that carry food and drink to flood victims, the four kitchens that prepare food for mobile feedings, the 13 shelters that provide housing.
Brown volunteered for disaster efforts in Florida last year after Hurricane Andrew. The destruction there was much greater, he said.
"But the trauma on victims is much greater here because of the length of time they have been affected," Brown said. "It would be nice if these people could start to plan where they are going to go from here. At this point, they are unable to do that."
The wait, the uncertainty, seem to be taking their toll on flood victims. Brown said he sees a lot of unhappiness and depression. Living for three to four weeks on a cot in a high school cafeteria can be stressful on a person, he said.
The Red Cross provides a minimum of 15 square feet of living space per person in its shelters. There is little privacy. Lights go out at 10 p.m. Smoking is not allowed.
"When you have people in confined area, you have to have rules to operate by," Brown said. "That takes away a lot of individual freedoms."
Brown's three-week volunteer duty will end on Aug. 13. If the Red Cross declares a moratorium on closing people out, however, his stay will automatically be extended, Brown said.
If necessary, he would stay, he said. He would miss the family's planned vacation to the beach.
"This is part of our job at the Red Cross," Brown said. "I usually don't come out on disaster jobs. But when it's as large as this one...I feel like I've got to be out there.
"This is the essence of our work - service to people."
When Donna McMillen's plane swooped in for a landing at the St. Louis airport last week, she saw water - everywhere.
That is the only glimpse McMillen has had of the swollen Mississippi River since she left her home in Christiansburg on July 22.
McMillen - director of the Southwest Regional HIV/AIDS Resource and Consultation Center in Roanoke, nurse and longtime Red Cross volunteer - has spent her recent days providing health services at shelters.
"I see people who, when they were evacuated, did not have time to get their medicine and need a necessary supply to get them through," McMillen said. "I've seen women who are pregnant, diabetics taking insulin, asthmatics.
"I felt that if I could get off from work, I would help these people. I'm committed to the Red Cross and what they do."
More than 100 miles south along the river, Mary Mack, of Rocky Mount, travels what routes in Cape Girardeau are clear to deliver goods to flood victims.
"I'm on one of the feeding trucks - serving hot lunches, giving out ice and water," Mack said by phone before heading out on a 12-hour shift. "There is a lot of damage here. A lot of flooded houses, people displaced.
"I've never seen this much water before."
Mack said she took leave from her job as a respiratory therapist at the VA Medical Center in Salem simply because she wanted to help.
"I love helping people," she said. "You never know when you need the help returned."
by CNB