Heroes During Hurricane Katrina

A hero is defined as someone who completes brave acts and or possesses admirable qualities. During the storms of Hurricane Katrina, many heroic figures emerged, ranging from individuals concerned with the medical aspect of the survivors’ health to individuals focused on feeding the general public displaced from their homes. All of these figures worked towards the same outcome: assisting the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The main difference is how the general public perceived these heroic individuals. Welcome to New Orleans, a documentary following the story of Malik Rahim and the Common Ground Organization’s efforts to feed and provide health care for the survivors, and Five Days at Memorial, a book focused on the events taking place in Memorial

Hospital the days after Hurricane Katrina, depict drastically different ways the public perceived and accepted the help they were offered. While the qualities that make an individual a heroic figure might be the same, the people who were accepted as heroes were based strongly on the stereotypes surrounding the positions of these individuals.
Five Days at Memorial, written by Sheri Fink, engages with the doctors that were directly involved with the healthcare of the patients admitted at Memorial Hospital in the days following Hurricane Katrina. Many of these healthcare providers were viewed as heroic individuals because of the selfless time and effort they put into taking care of their patients. They even helped evacuate the patients under their care when necessary. When discussing the viewpoints of the company, an employee said that it is the company’s top “priority to get all patients and employees/families out of Memorial” (Fink, 176). The physicians at Memorial were completely immersed in assisting the patients in any way possible, which elevated their hero status amongst the public. Some of the physicians working at the hospital were there on their own accord; they had made the conscious decision to stay and help those in need at Memrial. An interviewer asked one of the employees at Memorial if she had regretted willingly staying at the hospital, she responded by saying that she had “no regrets whatsoever, I don’t regret it at all because I’m a nurse and that’s what nurses do” (Fink 231-232). These hospital workers did not feel like this situation was any different than other days, and they felt that they had a responsibility to help others that could not help themselves. Both the compulsion to ensure that all of the patients were taken care of and in a safer environment, and the feeling of personal responsibility felt by the employees of Memorial to put the health of their patients before their own safety are traits that could qualify someone as a “hero”.
Possessing the same qualities as the employees at Memorial Hospital, Malik and the Common Ground Relief (CG) organization volunteers were concerned with helping the survivors of Hurricane Katrina that had been displaced by the storms. These displaced residents had no food, water, or access to health care. Malik Rahim instantly saw the need to assist, and felt a calling of responsibility to help his city of Algiers, of New Orleans, and its surrounding area. Thus he called in the Common Ground Relief organization in hope for their assistance. Almost immediately, Rahim had CG volunteers lined up. They arrived the Wednesday following the storm and began distributing supplies to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. They provided water, food, mosquito nets, wading boots, and even a health clinic for the injured in the area with dreams of setting up satellite clinics throughout the city. One night after a hard day’s work Malik was talking with the Common Ground volunteers around his back porch, Malik professed his immense gratitude to those volunteers who had stuck around and reintroduced hope into his community. In the documentary, Malik told the other volunteers that they “are the heroes, [they were] the ones who have made the sacrifices to come down here, even if it was for one day” (Rasmusholmfilm). Malik recognized the volunteers (that have come from all over the country to aid his city) as the true heroes of New Orleans. Malik and the Common Ground Relief organization made huge life changes in order to provide New Orleans and its surrounding cities with the materials and assistance that they needed to survive.
The main differences between the individuals at Memorial Hospital and Malik and the Common Grounder Relief volunteers are how they were accepted as emerging representations of heroes.

Memorial employees were respected members of the community before the storm; they had been the heroes before, saving countless lives in their day to day jobs. Nurses and physicians had already been seen by the public as those who help the hurt and injured. In The New York Times article “Critical Conditions” “author” discusses the conditions in which the employees of Memorial hospital worked in. Even though these employees had to work “without electricity and often in the dark, sleep-deprived doctors and nurses labored determinedly” (Sherwin). These individuals put their safety and health second, a fact that was readily recognized by the general public. After describing how the Memorial staff performed their jobs, the same New York Times article accredited these nurses and doctors as “heroic in their attention to duty” (Sherwin). The Memorial staff was praised and recognized for their efforts in the hospital in the days following the storms of Hurricane Katrina. The general public had no hesitation when claiming these individuals’ actions and even the individuals themselves as

heroic.
While the efforts of the city volunteers were praised, the volunteer efforts emerging from other common civilians and out-of-town volunteers were seen as less worthy and less heroic. The Common Ground volunteers working with Malik Rahim were disregarded as heroes and were even considered, by some, as criminals. Malik Rahim is a member of the Black Panther party, and as he discussed in the documentary Welcome to New Orleans, in every effort that was made to make his community better, he was perceived as a criminal and was shut down. His volunteer efforts, when teamed with Common Ground, was no different, and the police and “official” volunteers of Red-Cross saw them as criminals. In the documentary, the police and national guard showed up asking questions about if they were trying to sell these supplies and where they got them (Rasmusholmfilm). These officers believed that these volunteers were there selling possibly stolen supplies and preying on the survivors of Hurricane Katrina by making them buy goods that they could not live without. Another volunteer from the Red-Cross decided that she “didn’t like the looks of him (a CG volunteer), [for] she thought he was stealing the medical supplies.” Because of these misled allegations, the supplies that the CG volunteers had been confiscated (Rasmusholmfilm). A worker who had only been there for a day and had not been accustomed to the other organizations there to help was held in higher respect than a volunteer who had been there much longer.
A reason for this difference in acceptance may be that the community of New Orleans and its surrounding area saw Malik and his volunteers were surrounded by the stigma of being criminals. In the article “Racist Malik Rahim A GQ ‘Man of The Year,’” the author attempts to discredit all of the work that volunteers and Malik did in the days following Katrina. The author states that “there is no evidence whatsoever of Rahim doing any of the things he now claims to have done” ("Racist Malik Rahim A GQ ‘Man Of The Year’). The public refuses to believe that Malik and Common Ground did anything to help out with the community because there is no actual proof. In the same article, the authors call out Malik and the Common Ground Relief organization volunteers for being a “merry band of “anarchist(s)” suspected of stealing Red Cross supplies” ("Racist Malik Rahim A GQ ‘Man of The Year’). The author of “Racist Malik Rahim A GQ ‘Man of The Year’” calls the volunteers from CG and Malik Rahim anarchist because that is how the community perceived these individuals. Even with a noble cause and good intentions Malik and the volunteers he called in were seen as less heroic for their acts because they were perceived as individuals against the government and criminals.
Just having the traits that make an individual a hero is not enough for someone to be accepted as a hero by the public. The way the general public perceives what acts are being done directly correlate with the representations of heroes that emerge from a situation and area. Even though Malik and the Common Ground (CG) Organization had the same goal they were working towards as the employees at Memorial Hospital, Memorial nurses and physicians were deemed as more heroic than Malik and CG volunteers. Since Malik and Common Grounder volunteers were deemed as anarchists and thieves by individuals in the community the title “hero” was extended more to the Memorial staff during the days of devastation following Hurricane Katrina.