Imagine your terror as floodwaters lap around your ankles while you huddle, trapped in your attic with your spouse, your toddler son, and your mother-in-law.
BATON ROUGE – Imagine your terror as floodwaters lap around your ankles
while you huddle, trapped in your attic with your spouse, your toddler
son, and your mother-in-law.
Imagine, now, your relief as a rescue helicopter, its propellor beating
the air outside your destroyed home, arrives and rescuers send down a
rope that dangles, finally, within your reach.
Imagine, now, the heart-rending decision you must make. The helicopter can take only two people.
Lindsay Masters, an LSU freshman the fall semester when Hurricane
Katrina hit, comforted that toddler in her arms as his father looked
on, desperate to find the wife and mother-in-law he’d had to leave
behind in order to save his son.
“Only two could go, so the mom and the dad wanted the baby and [his
grandmother] to go,” said Steve Masters, BCM director at LSU. “The
helicopter rescuer said it had to be a parent if a child was involved,
so the mom had the dad go with the boy so she could stay with her
mother.”
Masters and his two daughters, both BCM members at LSU at the time of
the storm, along with his wife and several other BCM students had
decided to ride out the storm at the BCM Center on campus and got
involved in a major way in relief efforts.
“On Sunday night (pre-hurricane) one of our BCM students, Colorado
Robertson, came by and said [officials] needed some help setting up an
Evacuation Center in the LSU Fieldhouse (where the track team
practices),” Masters said in an email dated Sept. 9, 2005. “Twelve or
so of our students went over and helped for several hours. After the
hurricane, a decision was made to set up a hospital. I helped these 12
students to round up 50 or 60 more BCM students and they set up the
hospital on Monday night. This was the beginning of the 2,000 plus
volunteers at LSU who helped for a week.”
“The PMAC started out as a medical triage facility, but was soon turned
into a field hospital, while the Fieldhouse sheltered special-needs
patients,” said an article posted on LSU’s Media Center web page. The
article also quoted Chris Trevino, M.D. and the medical director of the
facility, as saying that the center eventually became the largest acute
care field hospital in U.S. history, with 800 beds.
As a result of his help in the preliminary stages of setting up the
hospital, Masters was asked to be in charge of all volunteers, a task
he fulfilled for about a week and half, he said.
In addition Masters’ daughters, Lindsey and Danielle, whom he said
became his right hand people during the relief effort, were putting in
16-18 hour days, he said. Lindsey organized about 75 BCM students
while her father was attending to other matters.
Needing 150-175 volunteers at any given time 24 hours a day, Masters
said many stepped up to help.“There was so much help coming from
campus,” he said. In addition, with 350 BCM students
volunteering, sometimes Masters would send volunteers to the evacuation
center downtown.
“Steve is very good with administrative stuff,” said Kevin Whitfield,
current BCM president at LSU and who also volunteered at the
PMAC. “Steve got everything organized at PMAC, got information
sent out, got people where they needed to be.”
The situation was not without its tense moments.
“On Thursday afternoon a flatbed truck showed up with 30 plus people of
all ages on it,” he said. Also on the truck was a mother and her
two-day-old baby who needed medical attention.
Armed police, who knew the truck was stolen, surrounded the vehicle in
an effort to protect those already at the shelter from what they
perceived to be a threat, Masters said.
On the other hand, the evacuees, who wanted to enter the hospital with
the woman and her baby, were in a tough spot, too, he said. The
vehicle, though stolen, had probably been a readily available
solution for the evacuees stranded in rising floodwaters.
The situation quickly became a stand-off, with neither party giving in when Masters came on the scene.
“They won’t let you stay with this lady,” he told the evacuees.
“But we need to take care of her. I know they’ll let one person
stay with her.” The evacuees agreed to leave as long as one other
person could stay with the mother and baby. After unloading the two
adults and the infant, Masters gave the remaining evacuees
money with which to buy gas.
Masters, his wife, and some of their friends also organized a system to
provide for approximately 700 Charity hospital employees who’d been
trapped in the hospital for days with no electricity, very little water
and little more than beans to eat.
The employees, whom Masters escorted to a nearby center, still needed
showers, which, despite an extremely chaotic situation, Masters, his
family, friends, and 40 area churches managed to provide by bussing the
hospital employees to various churches and even Masters’ own
house.
“[All the churches] did a phenomenal job,” Masters said. “I was so
proud—there were so many good people working together,” he said.
Volunteers at the medical center came face to face with many traumatic
situations, Masters said, explaining how many of the patients had been
evacuated by helicopter from flooded homes, retirement centers, and
nursing homes. Most of the evacuees were in shock. Some
died.
Having lost track of his wife during a particularly long night, Masters
found her on the floor, playing games with some kids. The family,
which had been trapped in their house, had been airlifted out, with
only the wet clothes they were wearing. Masters’ wife had
volunteered to play with the kids while the mother went to gather food,
clothing and other essentials for her children at the distribution
center on campus.
Not long after his stint as volunteer coordinator, Masters was summoned
by LSU Chancellor, Sean O’Keefe, who along with several other
administrators, awarded Masters with a standing ovation for his
tireless efforts after the hurricane.