Grand gesture not overlooked

One of the strangest stories from the giant Hurricane Katrina relief effort involves an admirable attempt to help by the Bonner County Sheriff’s Department.

In an effort to provide assistance for hurricane victims and to aid fellow deputies in Louisiana, the North Idaho department organized Operation Backup during the Labor Day weekend. The purpose was to take donated supplies and cash to the ravaged area and provide backup for the dog-tired deputies of St. Charles Parish, bordering New Orleans. Gathering the goods and cash was the easy part. Idahoans couldn’t seem to donate enough.

Delivering the goods and relief officers wasn’t as easy.

In one of the bureaucratic snafus that seems to typify government relief efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency refused to accept the two moving vans of mostly new goods collected in Idaho. Adding insult to injury, the seven volunteer officers from Bonner, Shoshone and Idaho counties didn’t find much to do to support deputies in St. Charles Parish, which issued the emergency call for backup and encouraged the Idaho officers to keep coming once they were on the road. Fortunately, the Louisiana State Patrol stepped in to distribute the Idaho contributions, realizing that the needy and evacuees weren’t as concerned as FEMA about crossing T’s, dotting I’s and signing things in triplicate.

Obviously, the communication between FEMA and the North Idaho officers could have been better. After all, federal emergency authorities had said early on that the best way to help was to send money rather than goods. But it’s hard to find fault with the open-heartedness and openhandedness that motivated the officers working for Bonner County Sheriff Elaine Savage and Shoshone County Sheriff Chuck Reynalds. Their reaction to the needs of fellow Americans who’d lost everything to the hurricane and floods serves as a reminder that Americans are compassionate people.

That compassion was seen as deputies zigzagged the state gathering donations. The Bonner County deputies left home with a moving van and a half full. They collected more goods in Coeur d’Alene, where they were met by two volunteer Shoshone County deputies and a trailer load of supplies. By the time they stopped in Lewiston, they could hardly close the doors of the second van. The convoy picked up more recruits and supplies as it continued down the panhandle and then across the southern part of the state from Nampa to Pocatello. Idahoans’ good will toward hurricane victims was evident at every stop.

The deputies weren’t cowboys riding to a rescue where they weren’t needed. They kept in regular contact with the St. Charles Parish sheriff as they picked up goods and money. Only near the end of their exhausting, selfless journey did they begin to get mixed signals that their help might not be wanted. The benevolent deputies and their supporters understandably were upset at the end. But they should know that their grand gesture wasn’t overlooked here at home.