By CHANTELLE TURNER
During Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the American Red Cross sent out an urgent appeal for mental health care professionals. Richard Heaps answered the urgent call and thus began his volunteer work.
“The wake of tragedy taught Red Cross it needed to respond to more than just physical needs,” Heaps said.
A psychologist of 28 years in the Counseling and Career Center, a disaster mental health volunteer with the national Red Cross and the chair of disaster services in the Utah County chapter, Heaps is a man who wears many hats.
With an “empty nest” at home and with a very understanding wife, Heaps’ life circumstances allow him to volunteer as a mental health care volunteer during local and national disasters.
After training for operating within the Red Cross, Heaps was sent on his first assignment in 1993 during the Midwestern floods. He was stationed in Wayland, Mo., at a service center. Citizens of Alexandria not only needed assistance with obtaining clothes, household essentials and lodging, but also with emotional needs.
“People frequently came into the service center with depression, difficulties communicating with their families and marital problems,” Heaps said. “People would almost fall apart in the service center from hopelessness.”
As a mental health care worker, Heaps helped pull people back together. But the nature of disaster-mental-health work is brief and short term.
“You have to be very creative at the moment,” he said.
Heaps said when counseling with disaster victims, he works to educate them on what they are experiencing, why they are experiencing certain physical and emotional symptoms, what they can expect to see and feel when they see their home and understanding how to deal with their long term future in healthy ways.
“Many people seemed to have a heartiness, a resilience that enables them to deal with stress that is a natural part of the trauma of disaster,” Heaps said. “Others aren’t prepared.”
Heaps recalled helping one woman from Alexandria prepare to see her home.
“Knowing makes all the difference to people,” he said.
She had no idea of what to expect in returning to her home. However, Heaps knew the homes had been flooded to the rooftops. Thus he helped her prepare emotionally before she saw her home.
“When I saw her she was very red-eyed,” Heaps said.
She had obviously been crying, he said. As she related the experience of returning to her home, she told of the large amounts of silt and snakes that now occupied her home. Antique furniture — in the family for generations — was ruined.
“She said we were able to save one thing,” Heaps said. “She held up a ceramic apple with a bite in it.”
She smiled and said they were going to make a sign to hang on the apple that said “I survived the flood of ’93.”
“Being prepared, being able to talk made a big difference,” he said.
Heaps was also a volunteer after three other national disasters. He was sent to Albany, Ga., when the Flint River flooded due to a tropical storm. When Hurricane Fran hit Wilmington, N.C., and earthquakes shook Los Angeles, Heaps was on site.
“There are some noticeable differences in the way people react to different disasters,” Heaps said.
The Midwest flood occurred over a couple of months and repeatedly hit areas, which caused serious depression among the victims. The Los Angeles earthquake occurred suddenly without warning. The threat of reoccurrence caused more anxiety, fear and panic. Nonetheless, disasters affect people and some are more emotionally prepared than others.
In Albany, Ga., 33,000 people were affected, Heaps said. Thirty-six shelters, two major service centers and a mass kitchen were set up. Because there were not enough mental health care volunteers, three volunteers divided their time between the 36 shelters.
“I recall one woman, who I was called to come and help, who was literally vegetating on a cot at the shelter for three days,” Heaps said. “I did some things that allowed her to get up.”
Eventually, she told her story to him.
When she was called to evacuate, she walked to safety in ankle deep water. The thought of not knowing if her neighbors were safe sent her back to her neighborhood. Her neighbors were an elderly couple who were still at home. She helped the women out in thigh-deep water and returned for the husband. This time she left in shoulder-deep water.
Heaps told her she was a hero. She agreed maybe she was a hero, but her home had water up to the porch, ready to go in. Lying on the cot, torn between knowing if her home was all right or destroyed, left her unable to move.
He arranged for her to see her home, and she left the service center. Heaps never knew what became of the woman because she never returned.
“It is an exhausting, but very satisfying experience to be able to be there for people at a time of serious need,” Heaps said.
The assignments leave him very tired, but very fulfilled.
“You can’t stand back at times of such intense human drama,” he said. “You do become involved.”
As chair of disaster services for the Utah County chapter, he has been involved in local disasters also. The disaster committee meets regularly on a weekday evening to train and prepare.
“Most people don’t believe the larger disasters will affect this area,” Heaps said.
Yet, a Mapleton mountain fire, an avalanche in Provo Canyon and flooding in a Provo neighborhood involved Red Cross setting up shelters in local schools and churches.
Fortunately, Heaps has the time available to volunteer. If he must leave during a semester, his colleagues are understanding and cover for him.
“The values of the LDS church and BYU promote an attitude of service and compassion. That becomes part of who I am,” Heaps said.
