Hurricane Katrina

Unions come to aid of scattered members, families

When Dana Colombo evacuated he left thinking, “This isn’t going to happen to me. I’ll just leave my truck. We’re going for only a couple days on a road trip to Memphis, sit by the pool, drink a couple of beers and be back home by the weekend.” So he and his family packed into the car with enough clean clothes to last them a few days.

His plan at least got them to safety before the monster hurricane arrived. The plan radically changed, however, while they were away. It started with the horrible images on the television in their hotel room. “The destruction from the hurricane was bad enough,” Colombo said. “But it really didn’t sink in how bad until later in the day when the levee broke and the city flooded.”

Colombo’s house and thousands of others in St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, were left underwater for weeks. The house, his pickup truck, clothes, furniture, food, valuables and memorabilia — everything was lost! The enormity of it is slowly sinks in, he said. Even now, in the quieter moments of his day, the memories creep back.

“Probably the biggest thing you think about are the sentimental things at home that can’t be replaced. I had a baseball from my grandfather that was signed by Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial.” He figures it to be gone by now. He can’t help but pine a little now and then for his truck, too, a 1998 F-150. “I loved my truck. Sometimes when you are just sitting around you think about these things.”

Permanently Temporary

Hurricane Katrina also temporarily shut down Colombo’s place of work, the union hall and training center for UA Local 60, in Metairie, La, west of New Orleans. For the next several weeks, work and home for Colombo were in the same place, but far from home: the training facility of Local 198 in Baton Rouge, La., some 75 miles to the northwest. There he moved in with his wife, Betty, his two sons, 8 and 6 years old, and his parents. “Everybody is fine,” he said.

To their credit, three UA local unions in the devastated region — Local 60, Local 198 and Local 568 (Gulfport, Miss.) — were quick to evaluate the severity of the situation there and come to the aid of union members and their families. The Baton Rouge Local, least affected by the storm, became the central command and emergency relief center. The training program was suspended, and the school’s classroom and lab spaces were cleared out. Gone, at least for now, are the desks, chalkboards, and practical equipment used for hands-on training. In their place are beds, showers, a laundry room. The large welding lab, in an adjacent building, now warehouses tons of donated food, clothing and cleaning supplies piled on pallets across the 250-foot building. The trucks with donated goods continue to arrive from cities all over the country. From here supplies are distributed to evacuees who are still in the affected region. The smaller headquarters of Local Union 568 in Gulfport, Miss., has also become an emergency relief center for members there and in nearby Biloxi and Pascagoula. Supplies are also warehoused at L.U. 568.

In Baton Rouge, temporary office space has also been set up for Local 60 until it is safe to return to Metairie. Here Colombo, an organizer, recording secretary and trustee, joins L.U. 60 business manager Lance Albin, and president Rickey Fabra, putting in long hours, in meetings and on the telephone, offering what help they can to stranded members. “I might hear from a member who is now in Chicago and asks, ‘I’m up here. You think you can call the business manager and see if they have any work available?’“ He added that business managers from other UA locals have bent over backwards to help. “We’ve been fortunate, real fortunate,” he said.

At the end of the day, Colombo still goes home, but now it is merely steps away, where a classroom converted to a one-room apartment is his temporary home. His parents, [mother] and [father], a retired plumber in the union, also live at the shelter.

The Colombo’s are joined at the shelter this day by apprentices Terrence Brown and Ulysess Payne and Donald Pugh, who plans to join the union. They are viewing pictures of the destruction in St. Bernard Parish on the internet, hoping for to get a look at their neighborhood. Their homes there were flooded, their families scattered to other states for the time being.

Walter Tyson, a Local 60 pipe fitter who also sleeps at the shelter, waits for the day he’ll be permitted to return to his house in East Orleans Parish, which received some of the worst flooding. With him are his sister, Dianne, friend, Teofila Arana, and two children. Walter goes to work each day at a shipyard in Jefferson Parish. Like so many others, they evacuated with just enough clothes and money to get by a few days. When the money ran out, they were forced to leave their hotel room in Houston and come back homeless and nearly broke.

What’s next for them? “We don’t know,” Walter and Dianna laugh. “We are taking it one day at a time.

“When they let us back we can take a look at what we have left and find out what the insurance company is going to do,” Walter said. “Then we take it from there,” Dianne added. Four weeks later, Dianne still can’t believe all that’s happened. “I still can’t believe it!.” How does one cope? “Hope and pray and be thankful that you got a bed to sleep in. It could be worse,” she said.

Story the Same in Mississippi

Getting in touch with members and contractors was also job number one for Local 568 in Gulfport, according to Randall Carroll, one of the union’s organizers. A month after the storm, Carroll says they have contacted about 90 percent of their 350 members, but it hasn’t been easy without normal telephone service. “Retirees, for the most part, don’t use cell phones, so this was a problem,” he explained. There are about 80 retirees living in the area who rely on regular pension checks from the union to live.

Paychecks also needed to get to those who were currently working. Contractors were dropping off checks at the union hall while mail delivery is suspended. Other contractors called looking for workers. By the second week after the hurricane, Carroll said they were able to start dispatching workers. While the clean up goes on, Local 568 plumbers and pipe fitters are doing damage assessment work on the casino boats, for one, testing lines and equipment to determine if they are salvageable.

The insides of the training school in Gulfport also look a lot different these days. Normal training equipment has been piled up in corners, making room for living space and donated food and clothing. They are offering temporary shelter for anyone needing it. Carroll said a few members left the building earlier in the day with bags of donated food. He expects some apprentices about to return to the area to be sleeping here soon.

“This stuff is for our members to come and pick up. We want to take care of our members first, but if one has a brother or somebody who needs help, we tell them to just come and take what they need. We want to take care of our community too,” he said.

With less space in the smaller Gulfport facility, Carroll coordinates with the Baton Rouge local to replenish his stock. When supplies run low here, more is trucked in from Baton Rouge. Two of the United Association’s mobile training trailers have been emptied and sent to Baton Rouge to facilitate the distribution of supplies.

Carroll said Local 568’s pipe fitters and plumbers work in the powerhouses, casinos, hotels, and other commercial facilities in the area. A smaller, separate Local ___ handles shipbuilding work in Pascagoula, Miss. It was completely destroyed by hurricane Katrina. The union now barely operates from a trailer provided by the UA.

Union Joins Relief Effort

Neal Miller, who in normal times is the training director for Local 198 in Baton Rouge, now directs relief center operations at the union. He said that as they have become confident of their ability to help union members, they are expanding their reach into the community. They are becoming partners to an extent of the American Red Cross, who is using the union’s organization, supplies and manpower to augment their aid campaign in the area.

“It’s not just UA members we help,” Neal explained. “We are reaching out to the Red Cross, to FEMA.” He, Donnie Perault, a L.U. 198 instructor, and other volunteers have hauled supplies to shelters set up at churches in the community. “We are taking orders, boxing it and bringing it to them: food, water and clothing, anything they need,” Miller said.

Local 198 has also used the training facility, on more than one occasion, to issue Red Cross debit cards to hundreds of families in the community. “For many, it was the first aid they had received,” he said. The experience, however, turned out to be not only a labor of love but one of frustration, as the crowd size grew each time to numbers too big to handle. He said they are now working with the Red Cross to organize much larger distribution points, perhaps at a nearby football stadium, to handle much larger crowds.

Neal Miller, who is 43 and a native of Baton Rouge, is proud of the role his union is playing as a community relief organization and center. “I have never been prouder to be associated with an organization like the UA,” he said. He said the leadership and support from the UA and its local unions around the country “has been spectacular.” From the start, the response from the General President, Bill Hite, and UA Training Director, Mike Arndt, has been “we’re behind you 100%, whatever you decide to do.”

At one point in the JobScope visit, Miller paused to take a call on his cell phone, at one point handing the phone over. The caller is Bob Mullen, a retired business agent and pipe fitter in Local 537 in Boston, Mass. Mullen had developed a relationship with Miller and Local 198 as Boston local had hosted travelers from Baton Rouge in the past. He called Miller this Monday evening to wish everyone here well and announce that Local 537 would donate $20,000 to a disaster relief fund set up by the union. “We try to help our own,” Mullen said.

Miller said the relief fund is off to a good start with donations from several locals, including his own which contributed $50,000. It’s money that is sorely needed to help unions and contractors throughout the devastated region get back on their feet and rebuild. And trusted to people with the spirit and determination of Neal Miller and others mentioned here, it’s likely every dollar will get where it is really needed and make a real difference.