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Photo by Reed
Hutchinson
Extension staffer Erik Cisler (left) assists Max Zousmer. |
Campus offers help to hurricane's homeless
by cynthia lee
today staff writer
One of the worst storms in U.S. history is bringing out the best in UCLA faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Ask Coleman Payne, a Tulane University junior who bounced from place to place, looking for a university to take him in. He finally drove across the country, sleeping in his car and lugging a suitcase, after he heard UCLA might take him.
“I’m just shocked that they were willing to help me when other universities wouldn’t,” said Payne, who walked into Joyce Manson’s office at UCLA Extension and found help immediately, with everything from enrollment to housing.
“They went way beyond what everybody else is doing,” said Payne as he settled into Dykstra Hall. “I just can’t say enough good things about UCLA.”
Bob Stein, a Tulane University law student, also found himself on the receiving end of such efforts. “We are as appreciative as we can possibly be, especially since nobody knew anything about us,” said Stein, who fled New Orleans with his girlfriend, Allison, their dog and two other animals they managed to rescue from an animal shelter.
Stein is one of 10 Tulane law students whom the law school has welcomed. More than 300 law faculty, students and alumni have offered housing, jobs, new clothing, cash donations and other necessities.
“There’s been an overwhelming outpouring of support,” said Liz Cheadle, assistant dean at the law school.
Staff from various units have been working hard since Labor Day weekend to get displaced students settled at UCLA and ready for the start of classes. At UCLA Extension, where most Katrina-impacted students were sent, staff answered 300-plus inquiries. As of Sept. 16, 80 displaced undergraduate and graduate students were involved in the enrollment process, without paying regular UC fees. As many as 50 undergraduates will be attending a UCLA College orientation today.
“All of us hope, of course, that these students can return to their home institutions for the Spring 2006 academic term,” said Execu-
tive Vice Chancellor and Pro-
vost Daniel Neuman, who said he was heartened by the response at UCLA and the national academic community in general.
“These young people — and their families — are finding renewed hope here,” said UCLA Extension Dean Robert Lapiner. Of his staff, he said, “I am enormously proud of their professionalism and qualities of heart.”
A groundswell of support came from other parts of the campus as well. Over the critical Labor Day weekend, both medical centers at UCLA and Santa Monica opened their emergency departments to the Red Cross, providing free treatment and medication to hurricane refugees.
More than 300 UCLA Healthcare staff members volunteered their services in the relief effort and are standing by to help if needed. “This is a wonderful, but not a surprising, result, given the generosity and caring of the people who work at UCLA,” said Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Medical Officer J. Thomas Rosenthal in an e-mail.
A few UCLA employees made it to the frontlines. Emergency medicine physician Atilla Uner, a member of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue California Task Force, spent six days in Biloxi searching for survivors and bodies in debris fields and houses along the coast that were pulverized when they were hit by loose casino barges. UCLA psychologist Merritt Schreiber, from the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress at the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuro-
psychiatric Hospital, was part of a Disaster Medical Assistance Team for the Department of Homeland Security that tended to evacuees at Biloxi High School, where a shelter and clinic were set up.
“From floating on a freezer for hours to swimming and dodging debris ... there is significant traumatic grief,” Schreiber wrote in an e-mail to UCLA colleagues about the people he and his team members helped. “Most have lost completely everything.”
Clinical Psychology Professor Vickie Mays, past chair of the Minority Affairs Committee in the American College of Epidemiology, is helping the college develop a disaster response plan.
Meanwhile, a dozen student organizations spent the days before classes organizing a campuswide fund-raising drive to provide relief for those in the Gulf Coast region and displaced families and students who have resettled in Los Angeles.
UCLA Athletics helped collect $39,298 for the American Red Cross at the Bruins’ opening football game against Rice University on Sept. 10. The NCAA is also allowing the athletic department to raise funds to assist the families of five UCLA student-athletes affected by the disaster. The Fowler Museum is hosting a benefit Dec. 1 at 7 p.m. “Fowler Out-
spoken: An Evening at Mardi Gras with Harry Shearer” will celebrate the enduring legacy of New Orleans and Mardi Gras.
In the aftermath of Katrina’s fury, housing and caring for displaced relatives are taking its toll on stressed and cash-strapped family members like Betty Sullivan, a 30-year UCLA employee, who is caring for her bedridden mother-in-law and three other relatives rescued from a flooded New Orleans apartment building.
While Sullivan has heard that resources are available for evacuees who need them, her mother-in-law isn’t well enough to get them herself. And there are other obstacles: For example, California won’t honor her mother-in-law’s Louisiana Medicare drug card to cover the $100 cost of her medication.
Sullivan, with the support of her supervisor, manager of clinical trials Margaret Eversole, has been trying to ease her schedule so she can spend more time at home.
For details on emergency-related support for UCLA employees who need help, go to www.ucla.edu, click Hurricane Katrina and look for the link on the left side of the page.
UCLA Extension Public Affairs Manager Julie Jaskol contributed to this report.
Problems galore, but also opportunities to learn
Hurricane Katrina and the mass evacuation of so many to Houston posed problems, but also opportunities.
As evacuees filled the Astrodome and other shelters in the Houston area, a team from UCLA’s Center for Public Health and Disasters was there, gathering health data to assist colleagues at the University of Texas. On alert for any outbreak of infectious diseases, teams worked around the clock to survey evacuees for Harris County officials, said Steven Rottman, an emergency medicine physician and center director.
Using a “Quick Response” NSF grant sponsored by FEMA, UCLA physician David Eisenman also went to Houston to talk with evacuees for his research project to identify the resources and programs needed to help low-income and other vulnerable people evacuate before a disaster. “Because the traditionally vulnerable members of the community are even more vulnerable to disasters, improving their ability to evacuate is a priority that this study will address,” Eisenman explained.
And just as the events of 9/11 helped spawn opportunities to learn for UCLA students, so did Katrina. In less than three weeks, Professor Bjorn Stevens of atmospheric and oceanic sciences was able to put together a Fiat Lux seminar, “Wind, Water, Chaos: The Science and History of Hurricanes,” that will be offered this fall.
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