On Aug. 27, Louisiana was hit by one of the strongest storms in the state’s history. Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 storm, brought sustained winds that reached 150 mph. It made landfall in the southwest parishes and raged for hours, leaving in its wake severe wind damage and flooding. Harvard’s Holly Grant witnessed the storm’s impact firsthand on a two-week deployment through the Red Cross, where she helped begin the process of repopulating the worst-hit areas.
Holly Grant in Louisiana, ready to work. (Courtesy photos)
Grant is the chief executive officer of the American Red Cross of Massachusetts, a role in which she leads a team of 70 employees and over 2,000 volunteers to facilitate responses to disasters and humanitarian crises.
While much of her work is done in Massachusetts, she is typically deployed a few times a year to aid in disaster zones around the country. Being bilingual in English and Spanish makes her especially versatile, allowing her to communicate with more people in their native language.
She said it was important for her to be on the ground in Louisiana to address the aftermath of Laura, “to support our partners, and make sure that we were doing a good job and being really effective at communicating the needs of … the clients … and how the Red Cross could support them through this transition back into the community.”
Hurricane destruction in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, in August.
When Grant arrived, nearly a month after the storm hit, to begin organizing efforts to repopulate two of the hardest-hit communities, Cameron Parish and Calcasieu Parish, she said the damage was striking. She was met with “block after block of buildings that had collapsed or that were heavily destroyed, homes that … roofs were blown off … and then just houses that literally were shredded.”
As the storm approached, authorities had called for total evacuation of the area, and the National Hurricane Center warned that Laura would cause an unsurvivable storm surge. Since then, Grant said the Red Cross has been providing lodging for 14,000 displaced people in 42 shelters throughout Louisiana and 12 in Texas.
Because of the coronavirus, typical congregated shelters were not an option, so the organization arranged for families to stay in hotel rooms funded partially by the Red Cross and partially by the state.
Grant’s role on the ground was to work with local officials to begin the process of returning some of these people to their homes.
She told the Press that every day during her deployment was different. She spent time assessing the damage in various communities, meeting community leaders and elected officials both virtually and in person, and coordinating with other nonprofits.
Because she was working within a large section of Louisiana, driving also ate up a lot of her time. A lack of lodging in the affected communities meant that her commute from her hotel to the work zone was between two and four hours each way.
When, toward the end of her deployment, the first people began returning to their communities, she was at the Lake Charles Regional Airport to help receive them. The arrival of the first bus was a culmination of the work Grant and others had been doing over 10 days, and the moment was both satisfying and emotional for her.
The first to return were those whose homes were damaged but intact enough to rehabilitate. They were handed “cleanup totes” full of cleaning supplies and were offered rakes and shovels before boarding new buses that would take them the rest of the way home. She said that, during her time there, 5,000 people were able to return to their homes, decreasing the number in hotel shelters from about 14,000 to 9,000.
Home again, but still involved
Since returning to Harvard, Grant has stayed involved in the project by keeping in touch with colleagues who are still in Louisiana. Unfortunately, on Oct. 9, only six weeks after the initial devastation by Laura, Hurricane Delta hit the same area. The Category 2 storm brought 100 mph winds and stymied some of the progress that had been made in restoring the communities. “It was incredibly disheartening,” said Grant. “Now we’re kind of starting that [restoration] process again.”
Despite the tribulations she witnesses working for the Red Cross, Grant said she loves the job. To her, being there for people “through the darkest times in their lives” is important. “It’s just a true privilege to be able to be part of their lives and be able to make a difference and help work and support them on their road to recovery.”
A great team also makes the work a bit lighter. “It’s just an incredible team that I [have] the privilege of working with on a daily basis,” she said of her colleagues.
Grant would like to see this team grow over the coming years. She said the number of disasters this storm season is “unprecedented.” This was her second deployment of the year—the first being to Puerto Rico to respond to earthquakes that damaged the area last winter—and the landfall of Hurricane Delta made 2020 the year with the most named storms to hit the United States. To adapt, the Red Cross has been focusing heavily on its recruitment efforts.
Ninety-four percent of the Massachusetts Red Cross workforce is composed of volunteers, and there are various roles that need to be filled, both in person and virtually. Grant urged anyone who is interested in volunteering to visit its website at redcross.org. “Someone will be in touch with [you] very quickly to see what type of role [you] might want to play with us, but we welcome anybody.”
