Thousands of volunteer feds staff Katrina relief effort

The number of federal employees who left their day-to-day jobs to volunteer in Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts has surpassed 7,500 and the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to receive offers from civil servants interested in lending a hand.

"We're still using [the volunteers] and we're still getting more people calling," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Margaret Walker.

The volunteer count is from all federal agencies, including the Homeland Security Department, Walker said. She said that it took three days to compile the number for Government Executive, as a comprehensive count was not readily available.

FEMA officials "were still in the 'Oh my God, let's get people there quick' type mode," said Homeland Security Department spokesman Larry Orluskie. "I don't know if there was somebody counting beans as much as they were just trying to get people down there."

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown sent a formal request for 2,000 DHS volunteers to department Secretary Michael Chertoff on Aug. 29. After contacting FEMA's Human Resource Operations Branch, employees able to volunteer were sent to either Atlanta for community relations training or Orlando for all other kinds of training.

Volunteers were to be sent to a disaster joint field office when conditions were safe and they had completed training, Brown's request stated.

According to the request, it was "beneficial" for FEMA to seek volunteers from within DHS, for efficiency reasons. Employees from the department already had been subject to background investigations and had travel cards and badges, eliminating the normal delay experienced when preparing a surge workforce.

The U.S. Fire Administration is one example of an agency that was able to send a number of volunteers, FEMA said. Fire Administration employees performed community relations work, including door-to-door distribution of flyers containing updates on the situation.

But some Homeland Security employees who contacted Government Executive said they were unable to assist.

Joanne Knight, a Customs and Border Protection mission support specialist at the Albuquerque-El Paso Air Branch, said she and two other employees expressed interest to their director, who forwarded her name to the agency's Washington headquarters. But she never heard back.

"I asked to volunteer, but was not given the opportunity to do so," Knight said. "I wish I had a story to share with you."

A number of non-Homeland Security employees contacting Government Executive said they were disappointed that employees from other agencies weren't asked by Brown to assist in the recovery.

Don Alexander, a systems accountant with a Small Business Administration office in Denver, said his military service in Southeast Asia and construction experience would have given him a unique ability to assist in the recovery efforts.

Melissa Pickworth, a Government Accountability Office employee, said she went through the condensed American Red Cross disaster training but has yet to be deployed. She said she also tried to volunteer in the Washington area but never received a call back.

Pickworth said her experience trying to volunteer has prompted her to take a long-term approach and get involved with the Red Cross' National Capital Area Chapter. She has started a series of disaster services classes to gain more knowledge and skills so she'll be ready to help in the event another opportunity arises.

Bernard Schack, a Veterans Affairs Department project engineer, said his agency put out a request for volunteers about two weeks ago after some employees in the disaster region were deployed to assist in relief efforts.

Now that there has been a departmentwide request for volunteers, Schack said there is a high probability that he will lend a hand.