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MillimeterAfter the Storm
Oct 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Cody Holt
Just two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Feed the Children was on the Gulf Coast using its video cameras to aid in the relief effort.
Like so many people on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, Tanya Roloff slept in a car the night of August 31, 2005, less than 72 hours after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Southern United States, leaving more than 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands without food, water, or shelter. The difference was Roloff wasn't homeless.
Guy Thiets, a videographer with Feed the Children, poses near a building ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, Miss. Thiets and other members of Feed the Children’s production crew were on hand to film footage for the charity’s fundraising video just hours after Katrina swept through the coastline.
She was part of a four-person video crew from Feed the Children, a nonprofit Christian relief organization that delivers food, medicine, clothing, and other necessities to families all over the world. Earlier in the day, the crew had traveled south from the group's headquarters in Oklahoma City to shoot footage for a 30-minute fundraising video that would air six days later on various networks throughout the United States. With nearly 700 hours of video to gather over the next four days before returning to Oklahoma to piece together the program in only two days, Roloff began shuttling through the footage on her PD150's tiny viewfinder in the car that night.
“Over the four or five days of field production, we'd shoot all day and then come back to our cars at night and transcribe our tapes and start writing the segments for the show,” says Roloff, who has worked as a producer and writer at Feed the Children since 2001 and has seen firsthand the devastating effects of famine, war, poverty, and natural disasters. “We're constantly in these types of situations in this job. Our venue never really changes. It's all about people suffering in one way or another.”
But this experience was a little different, Roloff says, because she was familiar with New Orleans and the Gulf Coast area from working in video production there shortly after graduating from college. “What was really shocking to me was the complete devastation. Just seeing entire towns wiped out was very surreal,” she says. “You don't ever grow accustomed to seeing things like that, but you learn not to let it break you down. You have a job to do.”
In this case, the job was finding families affected by the hurricane and telling their stories. The two crews followed Larry Jones, Feed the Children's president and co-founder, as he delivered supplies and spoke with Katrina's victims. There was the Baker family, a mother with three sons, who had no possessions left except the clothes on their backs and the tent they slept in at night. There was the story of Nicki, a single mother of three, who had taken refuge in her 84-year-old grandmother's small house with a dozen other people.
Back in Oklahoma City, Roloff and the other 10 members of Feed the Children's TV department pieced together these harrowing tales, interweaving them with emotional pleas from Jones imploring viewers to “be as generous as you possibly can” by sending money to aid the group's relief efforts.
As of presstime, Feed the Children had sent 333 eighteen-wheelers loaded with supplies to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. With roughly 7.7 million pounds of food, bottled water, cleaning supplies, personal care items, and other emergency supplies already delivered to the regions affected by Hurricane Katrina, additional shipments will be sent at least through the end of this year. Additional trucks also headed to areas affected by Hurricane Rita.
Guy Thiets, a staff photographer with Feed The Children since 2000, was behind the lens documenting the emotional stories of Hurricane Katrina's victims in the days following the storm's devastation. Like Roloff, he says the work was very trying, but also very rewarding.
“When you face such devastation, it makes you realize just how important it is to have videographers looking through the lens so that the rest of the world can see these things,” he says. “Anytime you can go into some deplorable situation and help in one way or another, it's rewarding.”
To view video footage of Feed the Children's relief efforts, visit www.feedthechildren.org. You can also donate to the group's relief efforts by visiting the website, or by calling (800) 525-7575.
Cody Holt is a freelance writer based in the Midwest. Email him at codyholt@kc.rr.com.
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