They always tell you to put your oxygen mask on first before helping others, and that is exactly what needed to happen after the Winter Storm Fern hit Nashville. As a social worker, I have responded to many natural disasters throughout the years, but this was the first time that it was my emergency too. The first few days in my home with dangerously decreasing temperatures were rough. Being the social worker I am, I feared the worst and placed my medically fragile mom in a health center with generators to weather the storm. She got power back on the third day, so we stayed with her until our power was restored.
Once I warmed up and was able to go home, we hit the ground running. We began a series of daily conference calls with the staff at JFS and numerous calls between JFS social workers daily including nights and weekends. We worked 10 days straight on limited access to the internet and spotty cell service at times. But we made do with what we had, and it worked.
The strategy was to connect with the most vulnerable first. We made over 100 calls starting with the seniors and individuals with disabilities who live in private homes and those without family close by. Then we branched out and made calls to anyone whose number we had access to at home. We learned that we needed to repeat calls because someone’s circumstances could quickly change. Making the calls was the highlight of my time working from home. Everyone appreciated hearing from us, and it became a method of being together as a community. If you didn’t hear from us, we likely did not have access to your number at home. Staying in touch with so many people was comforting to me too and was a source of my strength to continue.
I often to refer to Jewish Family Service as “family to everyone” but in times of crisis, we become surrogate family to those without family. These were moments when community members lacked a warm place to be, needed immediate food and prescriptions. They were cold, stressed, and needed help identifying and accessing resources. Others needed us to step in and make decisions for them. For the people who we cared for as surrogate families, their survival depended on us. It is a responsibility that no social worker takes lightly. We called upon our partners at the synagogues and JFS board members to join in being part of the surrogate families to provide basic needs to those community members most in need.
I finally took a day off which provided me with a long weekend to begin recovering from Winter Strom Fern. It will forever be a stressful event etched in my memory but not without the memory of those we cared for and the immense pride I have for the work we do at JFS Nashville.
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