Back By Clay Barbour; Post-Dispatch For four days, Ballwin resident Doug Storm watched as news reports captured in detail the chaos Hurricane Katrina left behind. He saw thousands of tortured faces. There were people trapped on their roofs, cramped inside shelters and sleeping on highways. He saw hungry babies, crying mothers and stunned fathers. “It just kept getting worse and worse, and I hated feeling helpless,” Storm said. Storm watched it all, until he had enough. Then he did something. He volunteered. The 35-year-old former Broadway actor was one of about 500 volunteers who spent Labor Day weekend getting the long-abandoned Gumbo Jail in Chesterfield ready for Katrina evacuees. The group is a part of a larger, region-wide explosion of volunteerism taking hold in Katrina’s wake. Area officials say the storm has led to an unprecedented show of compassion and support. Tens of thousands of people in the St. Louis area have made donations, with more than 5,000 specifically offering their time. The roll of volunteers has grown so large, so fast that officials now say it surpasses the actual demand. “We have more volunteers than we need, really,” said Kathy Gardner, senior vice president of United Way of Greater St. Louis. Officials from Madison County to Jefferson County have been fielding calls since Katrina hit. Most officials steer the calls to the local Red Cross, United Way and Salvation Army. Jefferson County Presiding Commissioner Mark Mertens said his county was flooded with calls. “This brought them out of the woodwork,” said Mertens. “Everyday people were stepping up and saying they wanted to help.” Jack Quigley, Madison County emergency management coordinator, said his agency has been inundated with calls but hasn’t kept a total. “We tried to find out what their particular expertise was and then steer them in the right direction,” he said. More than 1,000 area residents have registered as United Way volunteers since Katrina. Another 1,000 have signed up with St. Louis County, which is running a database featuring volunteers and their expertise. But perhaps the largest example of the boost in volunteerism can be found at the St. Louis Area American Red Cross, where more than 1,700 people have signed up online and an additional 7,000 have either volunteered or donated money over the phone. Jessica Willingham, executive officer of the Red Cross’ local chapter, said that within the next few days the total should exceed the number of volunteers who signed up following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. About 11,000 people signed up with the agency after the attacks, more than half of them looking to volunteer. At one point, St. Louis County had 17 operators taking more than 290 calls an hour. So far, more than 25,000 people have called in. Some want to give money. Others want to take action. “They just feel this overwhelming need to do something,” said Garry Earls, St. Louis County director of public works. “And a lot of them are not taking no for an answer.” Earls is responsible for spearheading the jail’s renovation. As workers began to arrive, county residents also started showing up. At first Earls tried to persuade residents to leave. He had a lot going on and didn’t have time to deal with the situation. The only problem was, no would take his advice. Doug Storm was among them. Earls asked Storm to leave three times. “I had already made up my mind that I was there to help and I wasn’t going to leave,” Storm said. “I was a little worried they were going to arrest me, but I was just so tired of watching those poor people on TV. Sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Experts say his experience was a fairly typical one. According to social psychologist Dr. Miles Patterson, a professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, It is common for people to feel stress after watching something such as a natural disaster on television. Patterson said many people can’t escape the feelings of stress and guilt. “The only way they can think of to relief that stress is to do something,” he said. “Helping other people literally becomes the way they help themselves.” One group taking the rescue effort personally is local African-American churches. The Rev. Anthony Witherspoon, pastor of Washington Metropolitan AME Zion Church and chairman of the Interfaith Partnership of Metropolitan St. Louis, said he has about 100 volunteers lined up. “It’s personal to us,” he said. “A great many of those left without homes were African-American.” For officials coordinating local relief efforts, the overabundance of volunteers is a welcome problem. The only question now is, will they hang around? Hurricane Katrina has spawned a relief effort unprecedented in Red Cross history stretching across 17 states and touching about 145,000 displaced people. “This isn’t a two-day disaster,” said Willingham of the Red Cross. “These people will need our help for quite some time.” This story may be available for an Adobe Acrobat PDF download. Click on the link below to visit the site download center. If a PDF is available, the file will automatically open in your browser.

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