Volunteers Who Risk Personal Trauma to Aid Disaster Vicitms

There is a little bar on half moon-shaped Tumon Bay, off the sparkling Philippine Sea. A straw roof keeps out the sun; the tables sit on the sand.

This was Guam’s “Cheers” for American Red Cross volunteer Deane Winant--a place to unwind and find peace. The La Canada Flintridge resident spent his days searching for victims of Typhoon Omar, tooling around the island in a car that kept getting flat tires from punctures made by coral. By nightfall, he and other exhausted volunteers were ready to head for the bayside bar and leave all of the day’s problems behind.

“It was a world away from an emotionally packed day,” Winant said.

He and his peers did exactly what the Red Cross advises: Learn to relax after a day of disaster work. The advice is particularly apt for Winant and other gung-ho, unpaid volunteers who take vacation time or rearrange their work schedules to rush out of town to the next Hurricane Andrew or Big Bear earthquake.

“They call it a kind of rescue personality,” psychologist Robert T. Scott said. “They like to be helpers, they like to be needed.”

Scott, a mental health volunteer for the Los Angeles Chapter of the Red Cross, is on a national American Psychological Assn. committee that is trying to develop a new division of psychology regarding disaster workers. The committee, citing an unprecedented number of natural disasters in the past several years, wants to look at the emotional toll on people who help victims, he said.

In Los Angeles, Red Cross volunteers have shown up for disaster duty while sick or injured: one wore soft, fuzzy slippers because of recent foot surgery, and another trailed an oxygen tank because of a respiratory problem, Scott said. Some volunteers can’t stay away because they like to lose themselves in the adrenalin high of disaster work, he said.

“It gets your adrenalin going, you really feel you’re doing something productive. It gets your mind off your own problems,” Scott said. “At the same time, it could sneak up on you . . . You get desensitized and dehumanized.”

Red Cross volunteers get 11 to 19 hours of training before they are sent on out-of-town disasters, said Rita Chick, director of volunteers for the San Gabriel Valley Chapter of the Red Cross. Training includes classes on traumatic stress.

At Red Cross disaster sites, volunteers are required to meet with mental health professionals at the end of each day. (The Red Cross pays volunteer expenses and provides lodging at the disaster site).

The valley chapter has 2,500 volunteers, about 100 of whom are on-call to travel, Chick said. Most on-call volunteers are retired or self-employed. A few have full-time jobs or families, but still volunteer to drop everything and hop on a plane to help strangers, she said.

Winant was between jobs when he took off for a month to help Typhoon Omar victims in Guam last year. Winant, 59, is married to an executive secretary and has three grown daughters. When Typhoon Omar hit, his work as a private health care salesman had been fizzling, and he was trying to start a new career in truck driving.

“I figured there were people worse off than I was,” said Winant, who now is a self-employed truck driver.

Winant’s first out-of-town assignment was to help victims of the Santa Barbara fires in 1989.

“I got hooked on it,” he said. “I saw what devastation could do to people and, as a Red Cross volunteer, what kind of service I could offer to people.”

Last year, while working for the Red Cross after the Eureka earthquake, Winant caught the flu but tried to work through it. He went home after a week, when he cracked a rib from coughing too hard.

David Stegner is a professional emergency services worker, but he still can’t get enough. Stegner is an ambulance driver and medic, and sometimes pulls a shift as an emergency dispatcher. In his spare time, he volunteers for the Red Cross.

“It’s kind of like a hobby,” the 22-year-old Arcadia resident said. “It’s just part of my nature. That’s one of the things I enjoy doing--being able to make a difference, (and) see these people get back on their feet after whatever type of disaster there is and be a contributing part of the whole effort.”

Stegner rearranged his work schedule so he could help victims in Big Bear after the June 28 earthquake. Stegner, who is single, said it is easy for him to pick up and go, once he rearranges his work schedule. But he worries about burnout, seeing victim after victim at work and after work. “The emergency field does tend to callous you a lot,” he said. “You deal with situations every day. When you see it, it’s just another situation. Not that it doesn’t matter, but it’s this patient or that patient. Pretty soon, instead of treating a person, you’re treating symptoms.”

The best way to fight burnout is to put yourself in the victim’s shoes, Stegner said.

“It’s trying to understand what they’re feeling, as well as kind of the . . . sense of responsibility to help these people as fellow human beings. When they need a hand, someone is there to help them. When you need a hand (someday), someone is there to help you.”

Red Cross volunteer William Yates usually spends his days reading manuals such as “The Characteristics and Origins of Smog Aerosols” and “Accident Prevention Manual for Industrial Operations.” The 61-year-old Rowland Heights resident is a senior air pollution specialist for the California Air Resources Board in El Monte. In the past eight years, Yates, who is divorced, has used vacation time to travel to five or six disasters.

He does not agree with the theory that disaster volunteers are seeking excitement. Yates spent three weeks in Hawaii last year helping victims of Hurricane Iniki.

“I don’t think like that,” said Yates, shaking his head and frowning. “You want peace and quiet. You don’t want everything in upheaval . . . I don’t crave disasters.”

What moves him, he said, is the ability to help people. There is no room to think of anything else, such as the emotional toll of the job.

“There is no toll when you’re helping someone,” Yates said. “I don’t think there’s stress, either . . . If you’re going to have emotional trauma, you shouldn’t be there.”