Once the immediate needs for shelter were met, Troupe and her staff began working to get ADA accessible trailers from FEMA. “People couldn’t get their wheelchairs into the bathrooms of FEMA trailers,” said Troupe. “There were no ramps. FEMA expected mothers to pick up their disabled children and carry them to the bathroom.”
Mental health issues were equally challenging. People quickly ran out of medication and had difficulty negotiating the chaos. Troupe helped arrange for families with children with autism to go to a camp in North Mississippi as the commotion of the shelters was too much for these kids. One four-year-old child, Troupe said, tried to commit suicide. “She lost everything to the water, so she tried to drown herself, to go back to the water.”
Since the hurricane hit at the end of the month, many people were out of money (disability checks arrive the 3rd of the month) and low on medication. The Coalition office became a de facto “post office” so that people had an address to receive their disability checks. Disabled adults and children were forced to wait in endless lines for ice until one woman collapsed in front of a Red Cross worker; then the system became more flexible.
Transportation was a challenge; in the evenings there is no accessible transportation at all in Jackson. Troupe and her staff waited in long lines to fill their own cars with gas; they took people everywhere. For people who where not mobile, they took people’s identification and stood in lines on their behalf—for ice, medication, and funds from the Red Cross and FEMA. People with homes also needed assistance; food was rotting in their refrigerators. Volunteers cleaned refrigerators and delivered fresh food. The lines were endless and the need was endless. In the first 11 days after Katrina, the Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities aided 350 people.
Since then, Mary Troupe’s organization has cared for more than 500 disabled survivors of Hurricane Katrina, from the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. She’s thought a lot about what she would have done – or not been able to do – if she had been in their positions. “I looked at what these people had to endure in the shelters, and I know I couldn’t have done it,” Troupe says. “I saw the cots on the floor and I knew I couldn’t get down there out of my wheelchair. And if I did, I couldn’t get back up.”
