Audio By Carbonatix
For Judge Margaret Keliher and other volunteers, theres little calm after the storm
The calm surprises, even overwhelms. You expect, when the elevator doors slide open, to be greeted by chaos–the sight of dozens of people scurrying about, poring over plans, shouting into cell phones, begging for help. You expect to see the alphabet soup of forces bracing for the onslaught of evacuees heading from New Orleans to Dallas, representatives from the TOHS (Texas Office of Homeland Security), GDEM (Governor’s Department of Emergency Management), FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), National Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) and on and on. But they are not here, on the second floor of the old School Book Depository, which houses the offices of the Dallas County Commissioners. Barely anyone is here at all, and those who do remain at 2 p.m. Friday are counting the seconds till their three-day holiday.
Until as late as Thursday afternoon, Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher and her tiny staff likewise believed theirs would be a peaceful weekend. At 2:15 p.m., the judge was discussing county employee benefits when her executive secretary interrupted with the message that Governor Rick Perry was coming to town in 45 minutes so he could see the first wave of evacuees coming to Dallas from New Orleans.
For an hour Keliher and Perry toured the floor of Reunion Arena, which had been lined with hundreds of cots for the sick, the displaced and the desperate. With camera crews in tow, the governor shook hands with some of the folks; it made for good TV as he welcomed them to Texas and as they thanked him and blessed the fine people of his great state for feeding and sheltering them. Then the cameras left, and Perry pulled Keliher aside. He told her only that this was but the beginning, and he needed to know what Dallas, the city and county, could handle.
Keliher returned to her office at 4:15 p.m. and rounded up the four county commissioners, wanting to know what they thought the county could deal with. A few minutes later, she had her answer: Jack Colley, the state coordinator for the Governor’s Division of Emergency Management, called Keliher and told her to expect between 20,000 and 25,000 evacuees. Keliher kept to herself what she was thinking: Twenty-five thousand people is a whole lot of people to find housing and food for, especially when those 25,000 people have absolutely nothing.
To Colley she said only, “I’ll deal with it. We’ll handle it.”
And for the next three days, that’s all she does–deal with it, handle it, without complaint. Her counterparts in Dallas’ city government will not be able to say the same. Though the city would end up providing the two largest shelters–Reunion Arena, which held some 1,000 people, and the Dallas Convention Center, an asylum for about 6,000–Mayor Laura Miller, City Manager Mary Suhm and Dallas Chief of Police David Kunkle grouse in print and on television throughout the weekend about how Dallas is being expected to absorb too many too quickly. Theirs becomes a message of impending disaster.
Miller demands to know why Dallas, along with Houston and San Antonio, has been ordered to take in 25,000 when other cities had to deal with far fewer. Suhm frets about the cost of housing and treating thousands of poor, homeless people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Kunkle warns of angry people floating in from a vicious city.
If Keliher feels as they do, she keeps such thoughts to herself. Over the course of the next four days she never tells her counterparts at the city that Dallas County is closed to people in need–even when, on Friday afternoon, Suhm reduces the number the city could handle from 12,500 to about 7,500 at the convention center and Reunion Arena. Not once does she demand help from the federal government, which would not show up till Monday. Nor does she ever tell state officials, We’ve done our part, enough already.
Instead, she works the phones like a telemarketer on commission. From Thursday evening till Friday afternoon, she is on her cell with mayors and county judges from across the region trying to gauge how many people they could take, no matter how small the number. On Thursday afternoon, she tells the county commissioners–John Wiley Price, Kenneth Mayfield, Maureen Dickey and Mike Cantrell–to talk to city officials in their districts and find out what their capacities are. Then she goes to City Hall to meet with Suhm and Miller, who insist the city will take no more than half of the 25,000.
Come Friday, Keliher finds out the city has overestimated the number of people it can–or will–take at the convention center. Dressed in a short-sleeved black knit shirt bearing the yellow county seal, a pair of faded Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots, the judge calls a meeting with county officials, including Sheriff Lupe Valdez. Allen Clemson, the commissioners court administrator, suggests moving prisoners out of the Decker Detention Center on Stemmons Freeway and into the Frank Crowley Criminal Courts Building. After all, Clemson says, “Decker used to be a hotel,” referring to its long-gone days as the Cabana Motor Hotel, where the Beatles stayed in September 1964 and where Raquel Welch once worked as a cocktail waitress.
“Now,” Clemson says, standing in Keliher’s brick-walled office, “how can we make it a little less jailish?”
At 3 p.m. Friday, Keliher learns that 60 buses, carrying about 40 people each, are en route to Dallas. They are being stopped in Mesquite, at the old Big Town Mall, where folks are being cleaned and stripped of their weapons and alcohol. Keliher says she has commitments from Tarrant County to take 4,000 evacuees and from Collin County to take 2,000 more. Over the phone Keliher tells Judge Ron Harris, her Collin County counterpart, “You’ve really stepped up here.”
Her phone does not stop ringing. The head of the Sheriff’s Reserve calls, informing the judge they have been activated and are ready when necessary. She tells him to be at the convention center at 8 p.m. Then Jeff Fagan, the director at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, calls to offer space–perhaps an empty terminal or hangar, whatever he can spare. She thanks him and says she will let him know.
Keliher and Clemson, desperate for any free space, walk across the street to check out the old Dallas County Jail, which once housed Jack Ruby and has been closed for several years. It’s in rough shape, but workable. “It’s better than being homeless,” Keliher tells Clemson, who assures her jail inmates can come over immediately and clean the place up.
“Maybe we can keep families in bigger cells, sort them that way,” Keliher says. “I’m not saying this is the best way to live…”
“But this is a difficult, unusual time,” Clemson says.
When she returns to the office, just after 4 p.m., Suhm calls with the news that some buses are going to Corpus Christi, which is just as well, since Reunion Arena is full and the convention center is not yet open. Five buses have also just left Mesquite and are headed for Tarrant County.
“That’s good,” Keliher says, relieved for the moment. She wants to go to Reunion Arena, where she is overwhelmed by the lines of buses in the parking lot and masses of people huddled out front.
“Gosh, can you imagine getting off that bus with nothing and having nothing?” she says, to no one in particular. “I can’t imagine it.”
“At least they have air-conditioning,” says Bob Johnston, one of Keliher’s executive assistants, who is driving.
“At least they’re safe,” Keliher says.
In the parking lot, Keliher runs into Ann Lott, executive director of the Dallas Housing Authority, who tells the judge she’s already found housing for 40 people. Keliher smiles, gives Lott a hug and makes her way toward the arena. Outside, she sees a small child, no older than 4 and without a shirt, baking in the sun. She reaches down, puts her hand on his head and tells him, “Hey, guy.” He smiles back, but only for a moment.
Keliher walks around to check out the tent staffed by Parkland Hospital doctors and nurses; she wants to make sure her people are doing their part. She turns to enter the arena, and inside she finds Red Cross volunteers, Dallas cops and troops from the Texas State Guard and asks how it’s going; they tell her all’s well. She’s overwhelmed by the sight of so many with so little sleeping on cots on the arena floor, and she is equally impressed with the volunteers doling out water, snacks and other essentials. She stands for a moment and stares at the bulletin board thick with sheets of paper, each covered with the scrawls of family members looking for lost kin.
Of the scene here, and later at the convention center and the Decker Detention Center, she will say, “It’s heartwarming and heart-wrenching, all at once.”
On the way over to the convention center, which she believes has yet to open, Keliher spots in the distance a large group of people walking through downtown. When she gets closer, she realizes it’s simply a group of teenage tourists. “Thank goodness,” she says, before calling Laura Miller on her cell to see if the mayor needs any assistance at the convention center. Keliher also asks Miller if she will be on the 6 p.m. conference call with Jack Colley and other local officials. Miller was unaware of the call, just as she was unaware of Perry’s visit the day before, which will lead some to speculate that Miller has appeared unhappy with Dallas’ involvement in the housing of evacuees simply because she feels she’s been left out of the loop.
The convention center has opened earlier than expected; already buses are coming in and unloading folks, who begin emptying out their meager belongings on hundreds of long white tables that, in a few hours, will be replaced by thousands of cots. Two days later, one of the dozens of doctors working the convention center will tell Keliher that on the very first bus, a 6-month-old was taken off without its mother, who died en route to Houston.
On the way back to her office, Keliher gets a message on her BlackBerry: A bus coming to Dallas has overturned, and one person aboard has died. “Oh, my God,” she mutters. She then gets a call from a Denton County official who wants to know why Mayor Miller’s on TV blasting Denton for not taking any evacuees, when the Denton officials were still trying to figure out how many they would take. (It turned out to be 380.)
Back at the office, Keliher runs into John Wiley Price, who earlier had informed county employees to use the word “evacuees,” not “refugees.” He tells her he had to go on black radio to “get in front of the story” that people were being “searched and sterilized” at Big Town in Mesquite. He worries his folks will not take kindly to the image.
After the conference call, Keliher stresses to Clemson that Decker will be needed perhaps as early as Saturday morning. He tells her it will be ready by midnight. She then takes a call from a Wal-Mart executive who is delivering truckloads of personal hygiene products at Crowley; then another call from a Denton official; then another and another. Throughout them all, Keliher stands behind her old, ornate wood desk, holding her phone with her left hand while her right is perched on her hip. She looks a little like an Old West gunslinger.
She will come to realize there is no plan to the evacuation of New Orleans, that it’s a “disorganized exodus.” This will be Keliher’s life for the next several days and perhaps even weeks–getting housing and medical care for those who need it, getting bus tickets for those who have jobs and family waiting elsewhere and trying to figure out just what the long-term economic impact so many new thousands will have on the city and county.
“You can look at it as being a drag on your community, or you can look at it as having some additional people who can come in and contribute to your community,” she says during a moment’s rest Friday evening. “In reality, the hardest part is going to be after the first two or three weeks. People will step up now, but then the horror will subside and then we’ll really need some community help. What are we going to do long term?”
She doesn’t yet know the answer and doesn’t need to for the moment. Hers are now days spent going from one facility to another, from Big Town to the convention center to Decker. At the convention center Sunday, where officials estimate 1,800 to 6,000 people spent Saturday night, Keliher learns that doctors have been spending much of their time treating the infected feet of people who spent days walking barefoot in wastewater full of broken glass. She’s amazed by the medical facilities and pharmacy, awed by the line of volunteers that stretch out the door and perhaps a little overwhelmed by the gung-ho attitude of Dr. Ray Fowler, a UT-Southwestern assistant professor of surgery who’s in charge of medical operations at the convention center.
The first thing Fowler says to Keliher is a line from the movie Patton, one George C. Scott delivers just before going into battle: “I’ve always felt that I was destined for some great achievement, what, I don’t know. The last great opportunity of a lifetime–an entire world at war–and I’m left out of it? God will not permit this to happen. I will be allowed to fulfill my destiny. His will be done.” The man clearly takes great pride in his work.
A little later, Keliher mentions the impression Fowler made. She turns to Clemson and asks him, “Isn’t that your attitude: I can handle this?”
“The whole community has responded like that,” he says.
By Sunday afternoon, they figure Dallas and the neighboring counties wound up with some 15,000 people before the governor’s office began diverting them to other cities and states. “It’s just not that many people,” Clemson says. They’re already trying to figure out how to shuffle people around, perhaps taking families out of Reunion or the convention center and putting them in Decker, where they can be together and have some privacy.
At Decker, there’s a giveaway general store set up by Wal-Mart and staffed by Edna Pemberton and other folks from Oak Cliff’s Concord Missionary Baptist Church. Sheriff’s deputies take Keliher into the mess hall, where there’s chicken and polenta and steamed vegetables enough to feed the 500 people housed in the facility; they inform the judge that Sheriff Valdez commandeered it herself from the convention center and brought it back to Decker.
Keliher and Clemson take an elevator to meet a family of 25–the youngest is 2, the oldest is 60–living on the 10th floor, which a sheriff’s deputy reminds is where the Beatles stayed. Though the place is squalid by most standards, a decaying jail that’s been opened and closed often in the last few years because of budget cuts, the children are pleased to be together, safe and well cared for, especially after having spent two days penned up outside the Superdome. Only after Keliher leaves the room do they discover she’s the very person who helped turn this jail back into a hotel for God knows how long. And a 4-year-old boy sitting on a thin mattress says only, “That’s a very nice lady. –Robert Wilonsky