Published in The Post-Star (A1)
9/12/05
A few days after Hurricane Katrina clobbered the Gulf Coast, an idea struck Cambridge resident Ted Berndt as he listened to his car radio. He heard an interview with an woman from Idaho who had driven to New Orleans to pick up a family of evacuees and bring them back to her home as a place of refuge. She didn't know them; she just wanted to help.
"She said, 'Wouldn't it be great if a whole town did this?' " Berndt recalled. "And I thought, 'Hey, why don't we?' We've got the resources and the big hearts to help people in need."
Berndt, 40, turned on the persuasive charm he learned in his career as a pharmaceutical salesman and began making calls. Within six days, he had rounded up a dozen potential host familes and a volunteer staff, found an office, opened a bank account and created a Web site to carry out what he dubbed "Operation Respite." His goal was to bring 10 families displaced by the hurricane to the tiny town of Cambridge, where they will stay in volunteers' homes for up to three months.
As Berndt soon found out, some things are easier said than done.
Operation Respite picked up a dizzying momentum after CNN aired a segment about it Tuesday. The phone in Berndt's new office wouldn't stop ringing with offers of assistance. Local businesses donated goods and services, churches chipped in with fund-raising and several more residents offered space in their homes.
Tina and John Imhof were among the first to respond to Berndt's request for volunteers. They own an empty apartment above the Curves fitness facility that Tina runs, which they've started fixing up for any evacuees who might need it.
In case people arrive before the apartment is ready, they also are clearing out three bedrooms in their large house. Two of their children have grown up and moved out, and their remaining daughter, Abby, said she has "absolutely no problem" with the idea of sharing her home with strangers. "We have the extra space, and they need it, so why not?" she reasoned.
The Imhof family has no special connection to New Orleans -- it seems no one in Cambridge does -- but as Tina put it, "the pictures speak for themselves."
While host families cleaned their spare rooms last week, Berndt and his co-coordinator, David Brushett, wrestled with the logistics of finding and arranging transportation for a group of suitable evacuees -- or, as Berndt bluntly call them, "warm human cargo."
They worried it could take weeks if they waited for the Red Cross and FEMA to respond to their requests.
Then, on Tuesday, she called. A woman in Virginia saw the CNN segment and got a big idea of her own. She told Berndt she was a rescue worker who had located three buses of evacuees ready to head somewhere for temporary housing. This was what Berndt had been hoping for, "an end-run around the bureaucracy" of FEMA and the Red Cross.
"It sounded too good to be true," said Berndt. "And as it turns out, it was." The woman, who Berndt won't identify by name because he can't be certain if she was being truthful, called at least a dozen times that afternoon with increasingly ludicrous stories about what was happening to the buses of evacuees that were supposedly heading to Cambridge.
The buses were trapped at the Mississippi border because the state was under martial law. The Army had quarantined them for E.Coli. She was hiding in her bathroom from federal agents. When she asked for a few thousand dollars to evacuate a dialysis patient by helicopter, Berndt decided he'd had enough.
"She got more outlandish as the day went on, and I think she was basically pulling tidbits of information off the Internet and magnifying them. It was crazy," Berndt said. "It's frustrating because we tied up four or five hours and let some other opportunities go in the meantime. ... I wonder if we should have just flown down to Houston ourselves to find people," Berndt said.
Brushett said he and the other volunteers at Operation Respite were "pretty down and dejected" when they realized they had been misled by the mysterious caller, but he thinks the experience provided a good reality check. "We're farther ahead now because it forced us to think about what we would have to do if people were really arriving in 48 hours."
On Wednesday evening, about 50 people came to a hastily convened meeting at Cambridge Central School, many of them still expecting a bus of evacuees to arrive that night. Berndt offered a military-style "incident action plan" for Operation Respite and did his best to answer residents' questions.
But he couldn't answer the one question everyone was most curious about: Is anyone ever coming?
"We hope so," said Berndt. "We're still trying."
Now, Operation Respite is focusing its efforts on cooperating with government agencies, while also staying in touch with "people on the ground" at shelters in Houston and Louisiana who are trying to organize buses. Berndt has contacted everyone he can think of who might be able to help -- even Oprah.
"It might never happen," acknowledged Berndt after last week's meeting. Hearing this, Brushett added, "But you know what? It's still awesome. We still came together as a community."
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