Water Recedes, Tempers Rise, Volunteer Says

The past week has been a rough one for American Red Cross volunteer Terry Baber.

First, she was fired from her job when she called in sick so she could operate an emergency shelter in the Cataldo area.

Then on Tuesday, she said she was shot at by a frustrated flood victim.

Officials investigating the shooting suggest that Baber may have actually been hit by a rock kicked up by another car as she drove to a hill to use her cellular phone.

Baber was trying to get to a high point to call Red Cross headquarters for help to defuse an “explosive situation” in Cataldo, she said.

Tempers were hot at the aid station as flood victims shared their problems with each other and Red Cross volunteers.

One man became angrier and angrier as he talked, Baber said. In general, “the emotions are just sky-high.”

As she drove onto the freeway to find a place where she could call for backup, a vehicle from behind rammed her car, she said. She thought she recognized the driver as an angry flood victim.

“I hit the gas,” Baber said as she took a cigarette break and waited for a sheriff’s deputy to take her statement at the Red Cross headquarters in Coeur d’Alene. “I got maybe a mile down the freeway and he pulled up beside me … and blam! It was like someone slapped me.”

The bullet or rock entered the vehicle through her open driver’s side window and grazed her cheek as she turned to look at the driver, she said.

Baber, 42, pointed to her cheek, marked with a purplish bruise and red streak from where she said the bullet grazed her.

The report of the shooting cut lunch short for people cleaning up mud and flood debris in Cataldo. Red Cross officials ordered the volunteers to return to Coeur d’Alene.

The incident came less than a week after Baber lost her job as an accounting clerk at Yellowstone Trucking, which is owned by Crown Pacific.

A Crown Pacific spokeswoman in Portland said Baber was on probation for previous absences when she called in sick last Wednesday.

“This has nothing to do with volunteering,” said Crown Pacific spokeswoman Marian Massey. “The issue here is that the employee wasn’t truthful about her absence.”

Baber is one of the local Red Cross chapter’s most highly trained volunteers, said chapter director Carole Hall.

When Baber was called at 3 a.m. last Wednesday to set up a shelter for Cataldo residents, she went. Later, she used a ham radio to convey a message to her mother, asking her to call her employers and tell them she was sick, she said.

“I had to go,” she said. “You have people who are fleeing their homes. The water’s rising. The helicopters are plucking them off the mountains.”

When Hall called Crown Pacific’s offices in Portland to argue Baber’s case, she was told that someone would have to get back to her.

The headquarters building was being evacuated because of rising flood waters, she was told.

Baber’s been volunteering full-time since losing her job. She said the volunteer work is her pay-back to the community for the years she spent on welfare as a single mother with three children.

After the disaster’s over, “I’ll have to go down and file for unemployment,” she said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo