When Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Abby Adams, a former New York Red Cross employee and the mother of a one-year-old daughter, knew immediately that she had to help. "I came to work at Red Cross right after 9/11,” she said. “I was so moved by the generosity of people from across the country that I needed to give back what they had given to New York.” 

Within a week, Abby found herself in the Mississippi state capital, Jackson, about three and a half hours north of the coast. Her child was being looked after by her husband and a series of child care providers. She was looking after hurricane survivors as a Red Cross Public Affairs Officer charged with media relations, at a shelter servicing thousands of evacuees a day. 

“The media did so much more than just cover stories,” she said. “It played a crucial role as an information resource, especially at this chaotic time, when most of the electricity was out.”

Abby spoke with survivors to determine their needs in order to convey those needs to the press. She and other Red Cross Public Affairs volunteers made themselves available in the morning, afternoon and evening for interviews with Jackson's three TV stations, spoke with radio interviewers at every critical juncture and worked with the city"s daily newspaper, the “Clarion Ledger,” on three to four stories a day. “We helped the media get out the message of where survivors could go for help in putting their lives back together,” she said.

Abby also helped to organize a joint press conference held by the Red Cross and black faith community leaders. She called that conference, complete with prayer and a gospel choir, a call to arms. “It was powerful to see the community and the Red Cross stepping up to outline the road to recovery,” she said. That road led directly to community churches, which would step in and move families out of Red Cross shelters, a transitional step for survivors.

Red Cross Public Affairs is also charged with volunteer morale. So Abby helped to create a four- to five-page newsletter for volunteers called “Action Jackson.” Public affairs volunteers took pictures and wrote stories. A local Kinkos helped with printing. “Action Jackson” kept the volunteer staff updated on the often minute-to-minute changes occurring at the shelter, including the services being provided to evacuees. “People enjoyed the newsletter,” said Abby. “It created a sense of community.”

She echoed the sentiments of other Red Cross volunteers about the inclusive nature of the relief effort. “At the shelter, I met volunteers from Finland, Toronto, and Ottawa,” she said. “My team had members from Las Vegas, Ohio, Berkeley, Missouri, New York and Boston. It was amazing to see all these people thrown together with a passion to help, all with different roles and functions. From the outside it looked like, How is this going to work? But somehow it did.”

Although she’d been teaching Red Cross preparedness classes for almost a year, volunteering in the Gulf really brought home the class’s message. “It hit me so hard that the evacuees could have avoided at least some hardship and heartache if they’d had some of this training,” she said. “People had fled their homes with nothing; no ID at all. With the training, they might have taken copies of important documents with them, or had a phone number for an out-of-state contact.”

Abby summed up her experience with, “It was amazing to watch the relief effort unfold. Being part of that effort was not easy, but it was gratifying and important, and I have to praise the remarkable Red Cross volunteers I worked with.”  “I want to go back,” she added. “The people in the south were so grateful and so open to our help.”