Brian Heynen gave up his job to offer hurricane relief in the Gulf because he wanted to atone for some mistakes he’s made. click here for live stream broadcast

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		pictures that Brian took with his cell phone of the destruction the hurricane left behind to clean up.

     Twenty-five year old Brian Heynen left his job last month in Hayward to help out with hurricane relief in the Gulf States.  Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network has more.

 

After hurricane Katrina struck Heynen watched T V coverage about destruction and rioting.  So Heynen quit his job at the tree nursery and loaded up his old van.

 

“Oh, I did have a twelve gauge but I had that hidden in the back. Not loaded most of the time. You don’t really need that. I only used that when I was going through the real tore up areas like past a couple of roadblocks and stuff. You don’t really need it.  I just listened to the news stories a little too much. I had it there in case.  The only thing it would have been good for is getting food for people.”

 

Besides the gun Heynen received support for his trip from a church in Spooner.

 

“I brought a chain saw and tarps and all sorts of stuff for helping people.”

“…and the alcohol and the toilet paper, paper towels, and I had some bleach, you need bleach down there, hydrogen peroxide right after  a storm, that’s what people were lacking the most of.”

 

When the hurricane struck Heynen knew that soldiers and supplies that could have helped are fighting in Iraq. But Heynen wanted to serve his country, too. 

 

“I’d like to join the Army, but I don’t want to do what they say.  So I figured I’ll go help here.  I’m of the right age that people who are supposed to be aren’t around.”

“You know, it’s what I’m supposed to do in a real society.”

 

There are other deeper, darker reasons, too for Heynen to make pilgrimage to the gulf states.

 

“Well, I’ve done bad things and I figured this would make up for them. Basically, that’s the easiest  way to explain it without saying a lot.”

 

“I’ve done very bad things and I figured this was a way to make up for them.”

 

His first stop was Gulfport, Mississippi.  Heynen has seen destruction before, but the impact from Katrina defied his imagination. He says there are miles and miles that are just completely flattened.

“Oh, just amazed, like, you know, I’ve seen tornados before, but this goes on and on.  Although I kind of knew I was going to be really surprised by it.  I was just as surprised as I figured I’d be.  So I just took some time and just check it out for myself. And that’s mainly what I wanted to do while I was down there.  Talk with the people and offer them some help in exchange to find out what’s going on.”

 When Heynen visited Mississippi and New Orleans he distributed his tarps, cut up some trees, changed some tires, and gave out water and food.  He said the people readily accepted his help.

“Well, you think someone is gonna take more than their share, well, they’ll look around at all the destruction, and start to feel bad, well you know, there’s some old saying from the Bible, you find God after the storm, not for or during anything, and it seemed like that because all them people were real nice, and polite, and well behaved. You know, it doesn’t matter God or not.  You know the non-religious people were just as nice as the religious people.  All kinds of people coming to help. But I think it couldn’t have happened without the churches.  These little communities of people did best because they have some kind of organization. Not individuals like myself on our own.”

 

According to an article in the New York Times, since the storm struck, more than two hundred thousand people remain homeless, living in hotel rooms.  The federal government has managed to find homes for only sixteen thousand people, even though right after Katrina FEMA purchased hundreds of thousands of trailer houses for the evacuees. The Small Business Administration has also been pretty poky in distributing loans.  Heynen says bureaucratic red tape is preventing help from getting to people who need it.

 

“they think like everything in politics too much red tape, and I think too much red tape slows things down.  You have to. They get the money, then they count it, before they’re going to distribute it, getting some volunteered goods or whatever, settling out the bank account crap,  a lot of the churches were using their own funds, going and getting stuff and bringing it down there, and I’m sure they’re entitled to some government voucher after the fact.  What was getting people fed immediately was immediate action and not meeting after meeting with red tape.”

 

Heynen plans to return to the gulf in a few months.  This time with a tape recorder.

 

I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network.

 

To help Brian Heynen take a tape recorder and help to the next hurricane contact the web site for his non-profit group www.affectchangewisconsin.org

Web Design by Sandy Lyon

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