Sandi said, "I'm going to give you a little background on Hurricane Katrina.
On August 29th, 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit the United States. Five states were severely impacted: Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas all sustained damage from the hurricane. In fact, the affected area is the size of Great Britain.
One thousand eight hundred people died from Hurricane Katrina and 700 are missing. Ninety three of the deceased are still unidentified.
I had been watching the news about Katrina when I saw the flooding in New Orleans. I just couldn't watch any more. I asked at a church meeting if anyone wanted to go with me to Mississippi and 3 women responded. Eight weeks after the hurricane I left with those three women and another from New York City. We called ourselves Presbyterian Southern Comfort because it was the only name I could think of.
We spent 8 days in D'Iberville, Mississippi living in summer tents on a baseball field. We ate dinner at a Red Cross feeding station across town. We made breakfast and sandwiches for lunch at a concession stand that was overrun by roaches. We showered at a gym in the next town. Survivors of the storm stopped by every day and asked if they too could live in one of our tents because that was so much better than what they had.
Between 50 to 60% of D'Iberville, Mississippi had been destroyed. The remaining buildings were mostly covered in blue tarps. There were no street lights, traffic lights, or stop signs. There were whole houses sitting in the roads. There were no streets in some areas because the streets had been pulverized and washed out to the sea.
Homes were demolished first by the hurricane, then by the four tornadoes that were spun off and then the storm surge that was between 20 and 40 feet deep, depending on where you were standing. When the storm surge arrived it came in quickly. The story goes that if you ran to the kitchen to get your purse, you never got out of the building. Many people drowned in their homes.
The storm surge lasted for 6-7 hours and then retreated taking with it anything in its way. What remained was coated with slimy, contaminated muck. There were reports of farm animals swimming in the ocean as far as 40 miles from land. They obviously had been swept out to sea when the waters retreated. Every tree was bare of any greenery but they all had little white flags of paper in the treetops where the branches had snagged papers floating in the water.
PDA is Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. In D'Iberville PDA set up a tent village that could accommodate 100 volunteers. They provided the sleeping tents, meeting tents, tables, chairs, tools, gloves, masks, cots, blankets, port-a-potties, bio-hazard suits and a site manager. It was the first volunteer tent village on American soil. They didn't know how to do one so they asked for help from the Norwegian Government who sent experts to tell them how to set up and manage a tent village. Before the year was out, 5 more tent villages were either planned or established. Some were on public ground, some were on church grounds. They all were run by volunteers for volunteers.
PDA was the only organized volunteer group in D’Iberville. There were other groups in other towns... Catholic Relief, Islamic Relief, Jewish Relief, Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, Baptists, Church World Service, Hand and Feet Ministries...and more. It seems that each group took a different town so there was more coverage.
The rules have been the same from the beginning. Help is given to those who ask. There is no distinction made for the religion, if any, of the requester. We work on only one house per family. If they owned multiple houses, they'll only receive help for one. We do as much as we can do within our limitations. If a bricklayer is needed, then a house may wait until a bricklayer volunteers. Likewise for electricians, plumbers, roofers, and carpenters.
All the monies used for the houses and the camps have come through the Presbyterian Church or volunteers. You will pay a nominal amount at the camp for food. The tents, supplies, tools, electricity, and everything else has been donated.
At first the camps were used just by Presbyterians. Then they were opened to mixed groups. Now they are open to a variety of groups. They have had Jewish groups, college groups like Syracuse University who took 50 kids down on break, and folks from foreign countries like Mexico, Malaysia and Denmark.
On that first trip I handed out school kits in the pouring rain. Two women held a poncho over my head and the inventory so we could hand out school kits to children and the survivors.
Some people handed out food. There wasn't any food to give away on some days. But car loads of people drove from all over the country to bring food and blankets and baby food and bottled water and toilet paper and everything else. Yes …we know the Red Cross said not to do it. Thank God no one listened. I was standing there telling a family of 6 that I only had one can of soup to give them when a car drove up filled with canned goods and can openers.
We all did "spiritual accompaniment" which means that we listened to a lot of stories and gave a lot of hugs. You will do that too. People still need to tell their stories so they can move on. Some people have just stopped talking. It’s hard to carry that kind of loss with you for five years.
I remember a little boy, barefoot, wearing a skinny t-shirt and shorts who showed up for meals every day. Once he came with a little girl. He said that his family had died…he was the sole survivor. We couldn’t find an agency to take care of him. We gave him shoes and clothes and told the Red Cross Volunteer. She was one of us. And then he stopped coming. We don’t know what happened to him.
Another story…
A young woman was watching TV when the storm surge arrived. She didn’t realize it at first. Then the water rapidly rose up the couch. She retreated to the highest point she could find. Finally she had just a couple of inches of air to breath between her and the ceiling. Her little dog was with her and she was standing on furniture. When the water retreated, she left her house. But she didn’t know which way to go because it all looked like soggy shore line. Everything had changed. She wandered for two days trying to find a place to eat, a toilet, a place to sleep.
After the first Southern Comfort trip there was another one and another and another. Paul and Kim have been instrumental in keeping Southern Comfort alive and active. The upcoming trip is solely because of their efforts to put together another work group.
We've worked in various places on the Gulf and in New Orleans. We've installed doors, floors, and baseboards. Many of the participants have been hooked so they go on repeat trips. Many people in the group have been there 2, 3, or more times.
Mississippi had $125 billion in damages. There were 65,000 homes that had major damage. After the storm, some people slept in tool sheds. Others slept in their moldy houses. The government brought in FEMA trailers. These were not new FEMA trailers. Many had been recycled from Florida where they had been used for the prior major disaster. Some were leaking. Apparently they all had formaldehyde problems.
Let's talk about New Orleans. New Orleans was impacted most by the flooding that occurred when the levees broke. But they also experienced damage from the hurricane itself…devastating winds, rain damage, lost roofs. We worked on a house in the 9th ward. The family across the street lived in a FEMA trailer at night and in their house during the day. The house looked ok from outside. Inside, they didn't have a floor. I don’t mean that the floor was damaged. I mean that there was no floor. It had been flooded and rotted away.
Jean Marie Peacock is the former vice moderator of PC(USA). She and her husband lived and worked in New Orleans. Her house was a total loss and everything inside was destroyed. The water level in the house was at least 7 feet. Even solid wood furniture disintegrated. What was left was piles of rubble throughout each room, with a layer of mud and slim over everything. It was still very wet after three weeks, and the stench was terrible. She said she was struck by the needlepoint that hung in her kitchen. Everything in the kitchen was a pile of rubble, with furniture broken in pieces, the refrigerator fallen in, with rust covering the stove, and mold growing everywhere, with cupboards broken and things strewn in the mud and dirt on the floor. Mold covered the walls, as well. Yet in the middle of the wall, in the middle of this mess - the needlepoint still hung. It was untouched, a pristine white in the midst of the mold. It said, "God bless this home."
They had trouble finding an apartment to move to. They called about one apartment, and it was being shown to 50 people.
The company where her husband worked (small company with 8 employees) took a hard hit. They had not been allowed back in the building where the lab and offices are located for several days. When they arrived, they received a lease termination notice. They had only 4 hours to get everything needed to set up temporary laboratory space. The elevators did not work, nor was there any air conditioning. The office and lab were on the 14th floor - so they had to lug everything down six flights of stairs to the 8th floor of the parking garage.
Eighty percent of her congregation lost their homes and belongings and one member drowned in his home.
In New Orleans 300,000 homes were destroyed. Sixty-five thousand dwellings are still vacant. The rest have been torn down or are being repaired. The homeless population is between 6,000 and 11,000 depending on which newspaper you believe. During a recent weekend (2010) when the temperatures dipped to the 20’s, 63 organizations worked together to shelter the homeless population and still 2 men died. One organization, UNITY, gets 5 new housing vouchers a week for disabled homeless people, but there are 900 completed applications. At this rate, people will be without a home for many more months or will die before a voucher is available. Those who were lucky enough to get a voucher have nothing and need everything to make a house a home.
- Three quarters of the public housing was demolished and not replaced.
- Three quarters of the physicians left town.
- Forty four million cubic yards of debris was created. That's enough to line up dump trucks end-to-end across the US 4 times.
- The new landfills are in the former residential areas.
In summary, the federal agencies are not rebuilding Mississippi. The faith based organizations are. That's you. You are the hope of the Gulf. "
