A flood of help from Michigan

Local Red Cross volunteers aid and comfort victims of Georgia disaster

By Craig Colgan
The Kalamazoo Gazette
August 14, 1994

ALBANY, Ga. — The neighborhood is silent and empty, as far as the eye can see.

No people, just utter destruction — and Joan and Leo Kahle of Portage head into the worst of it.

They drive around several barriers, past sinkholes that devoured several homes and cars and street signs. They pass the cemetery where fierce waters yanked dozens of coffins above ground and then smashed them open with their rushing currents.

The Kahles (KAY-lees) pull up to their first stop on this overcast morning and get out of their rental car.

They are escorted by a disaster veteran, Kele Hickman. He is a Sioux Indian who lives in Hawaii, and he has been showing up at disaster sites all over the country for nine years.

But the Kahles are new to all this, and today they get right to work. Red Cross volunteers helping victims of what has been labeled by some as a 500-year flood.

Today’s task is home-visit damage assessment, verifying the horrible stories of loss the couple heard from flood victims the previous day.

Those stories seemed distant or simply unbelievable, they say.

Empty, low-income concrete block houses have mud caked on walls inside and out. Appliances are strewn and stacked at odd angles, hurled about by the power of the waters. Yards are littered with TVs, clothing, all manner of belongings, waiting to be hauled away.

The people who lived in these houses are either in shelters or have found temporary housing, leaving this neighborhood still and more than a little spooky.

“Tell me what you see,” Hickman calls to the Kahles.

His job is to train the couple to fill out detailed reports on these houses. Leo Kahle checks the water mark height — 7 feet — and other details, then steps outside and crosses his arms.

“These guys really took a lickin,’ he says.

In Red Cross terminology, Hickman calls this home “major damage.”

“Uninhabitable,” he says.

For the Kahles, and other Kalamazoo area volunteers, venturing to the Georgia flood zone was an opportunity to put into practice what they had learned through course of training in disaster relief at the Kalamazoo / Cass Red Cross Cross Chapter.

Not all are rookies.

Jean Spade of Paw Paw did two stints at the Los Angeles earthquake, helped tornado victims in Alabama and then Tennessee before heading to Georgia for a month of mostly 12-hour days.

Slade is working at the Columbus, Ga. Red Cross headquarters, in the logistics division. One of her tasks is to find rental cars for volunteers.

“We’ve rented 900-plus cars,” she says. “We had to go all over.”

In the beginning it was “total chaos,” she recalls.

The flood arrived in Georgia July 7, as Tropical Storrm Alberto roared into the state from the Gulf of Mexico, sending the Flint River and its tributaries up to 50 feet over flood stage.

Thirty-two deaths have been confirmed, and 52 Georgia counties have been declared disaster areas.

In the flood zone of Georgia, Florida and Alabama, 12,110 houses were damaged, with nearly 6,500 homes classified as major damage.

Eighty Red Cross volunteers from Michigan came to Georgia — and to some areas of Florida and Alabama as well. While shelters and service centers are closing one by one and the emergency phase of the effort is nearing completion, the next stage looms: Rebuilding.

“At every disaster that comes along — Hurricane Andrew, the Midwest floods last year — you always see lots of Michigan people,” said Hattie Pointer, a Red Cross public affairs official stationed in Albany.

Slade, a credit and collections specialist retired since 1992, has been here a month.

“This has taught me that American people are very caring people,” she said.

Carol Caldwell of Kalamazoo was a Red Cross volunteer for 18 years before she decided to take disaster relied training classes.

Since December, she has helped out Kalamazoo-area residents whose houses had burned and who were victims of other disasters, “but it wasn’t enough for me,” she says.

“Doing something like this — helping all these people — just sounded really neat.”

Caldwell is a family service technician, spending her long days in Albany interviewing people such as Jim Schultz, an Albany resident who figures he lost just about everything when the flood ripped through his apartment.

The Red Cross can provide him with a bed and basic household goods, all for free.

Tears come as Schultz tells Caldwell that probably only a few precious family photos were salvageable.

“You still have them, don’t you” Caldwell asks.

Schultz nods, brightening as Caldwell adds, “I heard today some people had found someone who could … (restore) photos. So I’ll look into that for you.”

Back on the house tour beat, the Kahles have stopped for lunch. The couple, sporting Red Cross badges, encounter several Albany residents who come up and offer hearty thanks for coming to their town and working so hard.

Even the waitress pats both on their backs.

“One guy yesterday said he has never seen anything like this, and he’s lived here 45 years,” Joan Kahle said. “You think as you are hearing their stories that they are exaggerating. But we’ve seen it. And it could not have been any worse.”

Craig Colgan, a Michigan native, is a writer based in Washington, D.C. Follow him on X: @CraigColgan. This article, written while Colgan was a freelancer based in Florida, appeared in the Aug. 14, 1994 edition of the Kalamazoo Gazette.

Article and photos: ©1994, 2024 Craig Colgan.