Charles City’s Coulson in Hawaii as part of Red Cross wildfire relief effort

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Stewart Coulson calls the Maui, Hawaii, wildfire one of the worst disasters he’s seen.

Coulson knows what it compares with. The retired Charles City school counselor and longtime Red Cross disaster mental health volunteer has been to some of the worst natural disasters North America has seen, starting with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Coulson was called by the Red Cross to go to Maui last Thursday, Aug. 10, to help with the Lahaina wildfire aftermath. He left on Friday for the long flight, and talked to the Press on Thursday this week about the situation there.

“It’s probably one of the most traumatic disasters there’s been,” he said. “More deaths than ever before in a wildfire, and we’re just standing up right now. I mean it’s chaotic. And it’s difficult, traumatic.”

The Associated Press reported that the week of wildfires in the historic town of Lahaina killed at least 111 people. Additional cadaver dogs arrived this week to help teams searching for remains of the dead on Hawaii’s second-largest island.

“We’re dealing with people that are kind of shocked and numb from everything that’s going on,” Coulson said. “We have thousands of people in shelters.”

Coulson said he is the disaster mental health manager for the Red Cross team on the island, managing about 20 disaster mental health volunteers from around the country.

As Coulson has said on previous Red Cross assignments, supporting the mental health of the volunteers is as important as working to help the victims.

“We have lots of staff that don’t have a lot of experience in deployment. They don’t have a lot of experience in sheltering. They don’t have a lot of experience in taking care of traumatized people,” he said.

“So we help people diffuse some of those situations. And we help people learn how to care, how to give, how to perform what we call psychological first aid.”

Coulson said there are about 400 “Red Crossers” on Maui now. Volunteers will typically each spend a couple of weeks at a disaster site as new volunteers are continually rotated in, but the Red Cross disaster relief effort on Maui will likely last months.

There is a huge housing problem with thousands of people displaced from their homes, so the Red Cross volunteers are sleeping on cots and floors and “wherever we can lay our heads and get some rest.”

“We come here expecting to stay in shelters. And we pretty much bring what we need. I brought my sleeping bag with my pillow and basically what we need is food and water beyond that,” he said. “We always say in Red Cross, as a volunteer we can put up with anything for two or three weeks. The real issue is the residents that are going to have to put up with this for a long time.”

A lot of his time now is coordinating how Red Cross can help the extensive regional mental health system that already existed on the island and in the state, to help provide support strategically now and continue to provide support months from now when Red Cross is no longer there in such large numbers.

“This is a tragedy that that’s going to go a long time,” Coulson said. “The entire town is just wiped out. Everybody here is having a hard time with it, volunteers and community folks alike, and we’re just helping each other.”

Coulson said Maui is a very close-knit community.

“It’s like everyone on Maui is a relative to the others, so they all feel very, very committed to taking care of each other,” he said. “Culture is a huge piece. It’s a learning curve for me. It’s new things, new ways of doing things, new ways of talking to people, approaching people.”

Part of that curve is learning to stand back and ask where help is needed, instead of rushing in and taking the lead. But even though there were a lot of mental health services already on the island, the people who provided those services have been affected by the disaster as well.

“Everybody I’ve talked to lost a friend or a neighbor or a family member,” Coulson said. “It just goes on and on and it’s so deep. We have the wounded helping the wounded here and Red Cross trying to support those efforts and keep people strong, keep people strong enough and with enough hope to be able to continue moving forward.”

One of the strongest attributes of Red Cross volunteers is their ability to adapt, he said, noting that half his disaster mental health team spent a night this week putting together a shelter – “folding out cots and getting toilet paper and doing all of those things that people need to be able to maintain their mental health, their physical health, their spiritual health, and all of those things.”

“We call it the Gumby Brigade, sometimes. You have to be flexible or it just doesn’t work.”

Coulson frequently lets the Press know when he is deployed to a disaster area, because he hopes if people read about what’s happening some of them will donate to the Red Cross.

Sending money is the best way to support the relief effort, he said, relating a story about loads of clothing being sent to the island. While appreciated and ultimately useful, handling that kind of donation takes staff away from doing other important things.

“If we get finances, we’re able to get the things that we actually know that that they need,” he said. “Financial donations are the best. That’s the most effective. It’s the way to know that it goes to the people. That’s how we get cots for people to live in shelters and food to feed them and coloring books for kids to play with, and all the things that go on for months while people are trying to recover.”

Coulson said that 95% of the Red Cross response is volunteers, with only 5% important paid staff who keep things organized so the volunteers know where to go and what to do.

Coulson said he had never been to Hawaii before this, and even with the local devastation he can see how beautiful it is. He noted that Friday, Aug.18, is his 49th wedding anniversary, and Hawaii would be a great place to spend an anniversary – but not for the reason he’s there, and not without his wife.

He said people back in Charles City sometimes thank him for what he’s doing, but he emphasized he’s only able to be a volunteer because of the support he gets from the community and from his family.

“I appreciate my family letting me get away, because I know at home the grass is growing and the horses have to be fed. It’s all those things,” he said.

“I might be the person from Charles City that’s here, but the whole town, all the experiences that I’ve had in town and the things I’ve learned, the friends that I’ve developed, are the reasons why I’m here. Working in school, working with kids at school, those are the foundation stones that have helped me to get to the point where I am, and Charles City gave me that. I appreciate it,” he said.

“I really like telling people here that Charles City is here, that Charles City is supporting the folks in the disaster. I feel like I’m representing Charles City. I want people to feel like that, I just want everybody to feel like it’s our effort,” he said.

Coulson said it’s overwhelming what happens to people in these kind of disaster situations, “and it makes you feel vulnerable, and it makes you feel helpless.”

“I will be home in a week and a half and this will still be going on,” he said. “That’s just a truth.”

TO DONATE TO THE RED CROSS:

• Go to www.redcross.org and click the “Donate” tab. Donations can be general or specified for Hawaii wildfire relief.
• Text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross Disaster Relief.
• Call 800-HELP NOW (800-435-7669).