New paradigms for therapeutic recreation and recreation and leisure service delivery: The Pattillo A+ Elementary School: Disaster Relief Project - case study

Parks & Recreation, Feb, 2002 by Carmen V. Russoniello, Thomas K. Skalko, Jennifer Beatly, Dana Bingham Alexander

In a 1999 P&R article, Shelia Franklin described some of the beneficial services that recreation professionals could bring to bear in the aftermath of natural disasters. In the article, Franklin justifies the need for recreational professionals to team up and form rescue operations in the tumultuous times following a disaster. According to Franklin, Operation Recreation Relief's mission should be threefold:

* Facilitate a donation program for equipment as well as service-donation program

* Establish a training program for park and recreation professionals

* Create teams of professionals to restore damaged parks and facilities and provide recreation programming and leadership.

The Pattillo A Elementary School Disaster Relief Project illustrates Franklin's three-pronged mission of Operation Recreation Relief in an applied setting through an on-going flood relief project coordinated by the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies and the School of Health and Human Performance at East Carolina University. This project was initiated in October of 1999 immediately following the flooding from Hurricane Floyd, which decimated much of Eastern North Carolina.

In addition to Franklin's three-pronged approach, the Pattillo Project employed a fourth process through which therapeutic recreation professionals (and pre-professionals) can specifically contribute to any given disaster relief mission: the prescription of recreational activity to ameliorate negative symptoms resulting from the trauma (recreational therapy). This fourth service delivery area broadens the paradigm of therapeutic recreation from traditional hospital-based RT services and community-based recreation services for persons with disabilities, to one that includes disaster relief assistance. These services as illustrated by Franklin also encompass recreation and leisure service delivery systems.

Prescribed activities and other psycho-social programs play a valuable role in the healing process and should be included as part of any disaster relief effort. The provision of recreational therapy services, including specific and comprehensive treatment-oriented programs are critical to disaster relief efforts. The Pattillo A Elementary School Relief Project demonstrates the successful application of these treatment services and illustrates a broader scope of service for therapeutic recreation professionals.

HURRICANE FLOYD AND THE SUBSEQUENT FLOOD

"We need recreational therapy", stated Dana Alexander, social worker at Pattillo A Elementary School, during the initial telephone conversation seeking help for 450 fourth and fifth grade students who had been displaced because of flooding after Hurricane Floyd.

On September 15, 1999 Hurricane Floyd came ashore in Eastern North Carolina and subsequently dumped an estimated 20 to 25 inches of rain. Within 36 hours, the Tar River rose to 43 feet, breaking the 500-year flood plain and overwhelming scenic Tarboro. Located within one of the poorest counties (Edgecombe County) in North Carolina, Tarboro was hit exceptionally hard by this disaster. In the days, weeks and even months following the flood, Tarboro, an historic agricultural tobacco and cotton town, would experience conditions reminiscent of war, with large sections of town needing to be evacuated (Eastern North Carolina experienced the largest organized disaster-related evacuation in U.S. history). Helicopters would be in and out of Tarboro seemingly every 15 minutes for the first four days. Fifty-one people would die as a result of the hurricane and flooding which wrecked havoc throughout Eastern North Carolina (Ground Zero). The Governor eventually proclaimed that Floyd's indelible impact was the greatest the state ever endured. It was immediately evident that recovery would take many years.

The waters rose quickly and enveloped entire buildings and their surroundings. Pattillo A Elementary School was in the direct path of rising floodwater and as a result, the students, teachers and administrators lost everything. None could predict they would never be able to return to their school.

There were many losses as a result of Hurricane Floyd including Pattillo A Elementary School. The ultimate effects were the impact on the stability and security of the fourth and fifth grade students. In a matter of days, the familiar places where the children sat, learned, stored their belongings, and played were gone. Many children were relocated in Federal Emergency Management Agency housing or began staying with relatives and friends.

When students did return to school, approximately three weeks after the hurricane, it was to modular classrooms set up adjacent to the Tarboro Armory. The 32 makeshift modular classrooms, albeit inadequate and comfortable, have the feel of a military compound. Tightly grouped together and connected by sidewalks made from pallets, the modular classrooms have only a few windows that look directly at other modular classroom walls or the armory parking lot. The "campus" grounds located next to the Tarboro Armory, with a tank in sight, are crude and inadequate for the growth and developmental needs of fourth and fifth grade children. There was no playground on which the children could interact and practice critical physical and social development skills.