Isle volunteer itching American Red Cross volunteer Ken Lee is anxious to get to ground zero of Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York City. He is the only Hawaii volunteer on the Aviation Incident Response team assigned to help in the on-site relief effort.
to help in NYC
As soon as airlines are running
again, he will fly out to aid the
Red Cross relief effortBy Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.com"I feel very isolated out here. My compadres caught the train, bus (to get out there), but I'm stuck here," said Lee, a retired social worker with Tripler Army Medical Center. "I've worked with a lot of people in the past. I feel like I'm letting them down."
As soon as airports reopen and Lee can get a commercial flight out of Honolulu, he plans to fly to New York City and head a staff of certified mental health workers who counsel airplane crash victims, family members and those "exposed to the trauma of doing rescue work," he said.
"I'm preparing for a long assignment because of the scope of the disaster," Lee said.
Various factors, including delays in getting there, have made his assignment as well as his destination uncertain. "When I go there I have no idea what I'm going to be doing," he said. "This is not typically what we go into. I'll wind up doing whatever Red Cross needs me to do. If it's carrying boxes of food, I'm going to be doing that."
Lee said the AIR team works with Family Assistance Centers run by the National Transportation Safety Board in response to airplane crashes in the United States and its territories. The centers "give families a structured way to grieve," he said, a chance to have others formally recognize their loss, to leave some of their feeling at the crash site and take away something positive.
It is also where NTSB staff interview family members, asking them to describe a loved one's identifying marks, what the victim was wearing and other things like whether he or she wore dentures or had previously fractured bones.
But the centers, usually held in a hotel ballroom, are also a place for healing.
"One of the most special things (that come out of it) is the family bonding," he said. "While eating together, they talk and exchange stories, and all of a sudden they're coping better because what happens to them happens to others. There's a comfort in numbers."
Lee has helped in three AIR responses, including last year's Alaska Airlines crash off Los Angeles that killed all 88 aboard. Experience has taught him that victims' family members will want to see the crash site, memorialize the site and bring the remains of their loved ones home.
But taking home remains is not always possible and will probably take a long time in the two New York City crashes, he said.
When Korean Air Flight 801 crashed in Guam in 1998, killing 228 aboard, Lee said bodies were unrecoverable because the impact was so great. Grieving family members were instead given baggies to fill with soil from the crash site. "Some of them were clutching it to their hearts like it was a substitute for ashes," he said.
Maria Lutz, Red Cross manager of disaster operations and response, said more volunteers will be sent out in the next month, but a lot depends on when the airports are up and running. "Everything's on hold right now because we're so isolated out here," she said.
