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by Marat Moore
On Friday, Aug. 26, before Katrina veered west and her world turned, speech-language pathologist Tiffany Hebert and her colleagues at Children's Hospital in uptown New Orleans talked about the weekend ahead-one had dinner plans, another was getting her nails done.
The hurricane, apparently headed to Florida, "didn't even make the lunchtime conversation," she said. At the end of the shift, Hebert bid her young patients a cheerful adieu.
Janel Mumme, a school-based SLP with more than 22 years' experience in Plaquemines Parish southeast of New Orleans and a veteran of Gulf storms, was mentally preparing for a hurricane-but not for the massive devastation that was to come.
"We assumed this would be like any other storm-stay and ride it out or leave for a couple of days. Come home patch the roof, clean up debris, and remove some downed trees. Clean out the fridge and freezer, then return to life as we knew it," she said.
Across town on the campus of Louisiana State University's Health Sciences Center, Natalee Allen had just completed the opening week of her AuD program. That evening, she and her classmates had their "white-coat ceremony" formally introducing their new AuD class to the university to the applause of family, friends and LSU's audiology community.
"Nobody that night was talking about a hurricane," she said. Her weekend plans focused on a cousin's upstate wedding on Saturday with her family, with plenty of time to get back to class on Monday.
For these and thousands of other ASHA members in Gulf Coast communities in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, that world has vanished, and the future is as opaque as the murky toxins that still cover parts of the Big Easy.
"Like so many others, I had a good secure job, a home I was capable of paying for, and a good start on retirement savings. In two days that was all wiped out," said Janel Mumme.
A Triple Disaster
Katrina was a triple disaster for ASHA members in the region-in both professions and in every setting-affecting clinical SLPs and audiologists in private practices, schools, and hospital, rehabilitation centers, clinics and other settings; students, faculty, researchers, and of course thousands of clients, patients and school children with communication disorders. First came the wrath of the hurricane itself with its bulls eye near Biloxi-pulverizing homes and whole communities and releasing energy equivalent to 10-megaton nuclear bombs going off every 10 minutes as it tore through three states.
Next came the deadly deluge of New Orleans, as Lake Pontchartrain poured through broken levees like a giant pitcher tipping to drown one of America's most beloved and vulnerable cities.
And finally came the greatest storm surge of all-of humanity fleeing both tragedies, an estimated 1 million Americans forced to leave their homes in the largest mass migration since the Civil War. Among them were perhaps 2,000 ASHA-certified SLPs and audiologists from storm-ravaged communities-the number is a guess at press time, based on blocked ZIP codes identified by postal authorities-and thousands more clients, patients and schoolchildren with communication disorders.
As the catastrophe unfolded, ASHA quickly mobilized. With floodwaters still rising in New Orleans, President Dolores Battle called all state associations, academic programs and Legislative Councilors in affected states to assess impact and needs. Staff contacted licensure boards in Texas, Florida, and other states to press for quick action and collect the latest information for displaced professionals.
"We're all one family, and what affects any one of us affects us all," Battle said, noting that members should check the ASHA Web site for up-to-date information regarding ASHA's continued efforts to assist affected members.
With member's cell phones inoperable during the frantic evacuations, ASHA raced to create a special ASHA Web page which was up and running by Friday, Sept. 1 with a member-to-member forum and information and links on higher education options, licensure boards, and state associations (see Useful Resources). Messages poured in-notices of job openings, academic placements, offers for housing, equipment and supplies-and messages of support and solidarity.
Many of the Web forum messages were offers of academic placements for students who suddenly had no classes to return to. The response of the academic community to displaced students was rapid and generous. Universities across the country are accepting and assimilating students into their programs to allow them to continue their studies with a minimum of additional disruption. Watch for more comprehensive coverage of the higher education issues raised by Katrina in an upcoming issue.
Displaced members also communicated to colleagues through ASHA's electronic mailing lists for audiologists and for members of special interest divisions.
Aftermath
Hurricane winds and water leveled the Mississippi Speech-Language-Hearing Association in Gulfport, but the staff members are safe, although it appears they personally have lost everything. The temporary contact for MSHA is Rick Burke at 800-664-6742 or mshahelp@mshausa.org. The Alabama Speech-Language-Hearing Association escaped damage and is functioning as usual.
Kerri Phillips, president of the Louisiana Speech-Language Hearing Association (LSHA), called ASHA's Web forum a "lifeline" for LSHA to locate displaced colleagues when telephone communications were down. "Our webmaster lost her home. We had no way to update our own Web page. We deeply appreciate ASHA's quick action," she said.
Meanwhile, ASHA members forced to evacuate the storm-ravaged region are trying to absorb the psychic impact of the disaster, locate scattered family members, rebuild their professional lives, and support others in distress.
"We're shell-shocked," said Tiffany Hebert, who drove in gridlock Saturday afternoon for Jackson, MS, then Dallas, with her siblings, parents and friends. She did not realize the storm's true impact on her home until Wednesday, when a CNN fly-by report showed the exact locations of levees' collapse. Her home, in an older established neighborhood, stood on higher ground on the south side of Lake Pontchartrain and was largely spared by the hurricane's winds. But then the 17 St. Canal levee broke three blocks from her home.
Through the ASHA forum-"my first stop," she says-Hebert located a grad school friend and a former colleague in Houston, and drove to that city where, through her ASHA colleagues, she soon had housing and leads on at least part-time employment.
Hebert's home near Lake Pontchartrain in Orleans Parish is inaccessible. The entire parish remains sealed. The rest of her family has scattered to Atlanta and inland Mississippi, but a week after the storm, the family was searching for her grandmother, an end-stage Alzheimer's patient at a reputable nursing home in New Orleans.
"She has no verbal skills, and no one knew anything," she said.
Despite offers she has seen posted on ASHA's forum with jobs in distant cities and states, she said she will stay in Houston until more is known about the fate of New Orleans. "It may sound strange, but many of us who had to leave the city want to cling to this region," she said.
One member left New Orleans-and came back. Janel Mumme and her husband, an operations manager at a water and sewage plant, evacuated on Saturday and then he was called back to work. After his company's vehicles had floated away, she drove him back and they moved into the plant.
In messages posted to school-based colleagues on the Division 16 electronic mailing list-and then in e-mails to The ASHA Leader-Mumme described her living conditions a week after the storm.
"I am living in my husband's nine-foot by nine-foot office" in the water and sewage treatment plant near Belle Chase in Plaquemines Parish, she wrote. "At night we put down two large pieces of foam with one sheet and our feather pillows. The military serves three meals a day and a local restaurant owner is offering dinners at his own expense for all parish workers."
Impact on Schools
With the school year just beginning, Katrina left an estimated 330,000 public and private school students from the Gulf region without a school-and left many SLPs and audiologists, along with teachers, without jobs. School districts in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas and other states are enrolling students in the largest resettlement effort in American education, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
In Houston alone, more than 20,000 students are being enrolled, and schools along the Gulf Coast are facilitating registration by waiving the requirement for documentation normally needed for enrollment. Students with disabilities who have no documentation will be reassessed in 30 school days, and the district will work with parents to develop a new IEP.
"School districts and early intervention programs in Houston-and throughout Texas-will scoop up qualified SLPs. We'd be delighted to hear from them," said Debbie Blaylock, director of special education for Harris County, TX, which includes the Houston metropolitan area.
Marian Polk, an SLP and coordinator of speech-language pathology services for the Houston Independent School District (HISD), also urged SLPs to contact the district's human resources department, which can assist with housing needs. Since school clinicians must obtain a Texas license, she's advising clinicians to call the licensure board, which she says has been "flooded with calls."
As an administrator, Polk's goal is to coordinate services with other providers, ensure all parents-including storm victims-receive the information they need about their child's services, and to make sure each child that needs an IEP receives one.
SLPs and other school providers will be trained to identify psychological effects of trauma in displaced students, she said, and added that a professional mentoring program is in place for relocated clinicians.
"We have, for example, a cadre of about 20 SLPs who moved here from New Orleans and have been here for at least five years," Polk said. "They'll serve as lead clinicians who will mentor displaced clinicians from that area."
What Next?
At press time in early September, members who now are far from home with their lives in chaos say they're still in shock, and some express anger and frustration at the slow and ineffective emergency response.
"Agencies were posting phone numbers when the cell towers were down and none of our phones worked. The response at every level was a disgrace," said Mumme.
Observed Hebert, "We're still in a short-term panic mode. We want to return to our homes, and I want to return to my hospital. But we don't know if we'll even be able to approach our homes because of the toxic sludge, much less recover any belongings."
But Hebert knows that some decisions can't wait for a full emotional recovery. Can she find a hospital-based pediatric position with an adequate income and benefits? Will she be able to afford her own apartment? Should she take a part-time job to meet immediate needs or hold out for a better professional fit? And, most importantly, will she ever be able to return to New Orleans?
"I don't know if I can go back, or if I want to," she says. "It's difficult. I'm all over the place, submitting applications everywhere and setting up interviews," she said.
"Work is available in the schools, and part-time employment is available in private practice, but I have no experience in those areas. That wouldn't be fair to the children and clients, and it would be an additional stress to take on a new part of the profession," she says.
"New Orleans gave so many people joy and happiness, and it is very painful to see the city where I grew up and its people suffer so much." And yet, she says, "we feel overwhelmingly blessed."
On the day of our interview-her second day in Houston-she and her family were celebrating the best news they'd had since Katrina.
"They found my grandmother, and she's in Texas! I'm thrilled. She doesn't know me and can't speak, but I can't wait to see her."
Dee Naquin Shafer, Susan Boswell and Ellen Uffen contributed to this article. If you have comments on this piece, e-mail mmoore@asha.org.
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