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Workers replace a roof in St. Bernard Parish.

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Making a difference in Louisiana

by Wanda Combs
Editor

A group of local residents, representing Topeco Church of the Brethren, gave a week of their time to help their neighbors…in Louisiana. The experience was rewarding, said the volunteers, but they explained there remains much to be done in regard to home rebuilding, road repairs, and bringing back the business community.
“To me, it was sad three years have passed (since Hurricane Katrina) and no more has been done,” said John Harris. “You can go in a neighborhood and there are three or four houses occupied and maybe 20 houses there.” John and wife Margaret, who both work at Hollingsworth & Vose in Floyd, took a week of vacation to help last month.
The volunteers, including seven adults and seven youth, left on June 7 and arrived in Louisiana on the following day after a 16-hour drive. They worked in the St. Bernard Parish (“parish” is what most states refer to as a county) 4 ½ days before returning to Floyd County on the 14th. For Leon Hubbard, who helped to organize the trip, it was a second visit. “I went last year with people I didn’t know, but who were also with Church of the Brethren….It was disappointing that things hadn’t improved more since last year, and how few businesses had come back. This year, there were a few more restaurants open.” However, Hubbard said three of the larger employers, including a Super Wal-Mart, had not reopened.
This year the workers from Floyd helped with repairs on several homes. Hubbard said the tasks included painting, tearing off a roof, putting down felt, and adding siding. One crew did plumbing. Some volunteers spent a lot of time reorganizing the warehouse and storage trailer for the Church of the Brethren warehouse. Hubbard said the Church of the Brethren will be using a remodeled house for the next three years. The house will accommodate 15-20 volunteers.
“The Church of the Brethren is the only religious volunteer organization with a year-round presence in St. Bernard Parish, even though there are no Brethren churches in the area,” Hubbard explained. The current regional project leaders, John and Mary Meuller, have been on-site since February of 2007. They signed up for a two-year term, but are planning to stay for another year.
Work assignments and supplies for the volunteers from various Churches of the Brethren are provided by the St. Bernard Project, an organization set up by two Washington, DC residents who volunteered for a week following the storm and then decided they wanted to do more, Hubbard continued. “They moved to Chalmette, LA and have been permanent residents for the past couple of years.”
Hubbard said he was encouraged this year to see that the majority of FEMA trailers had been taken out of the area. The volunteers saw some of them beside the interstate in Mississippi. Unfortunately, he noted, a lot of the houses “haven’t been touched.”
Any help the residents receive is appreciated, he added. One woman was thrilled the crew was working on her house. She had been living with her two children in a FEMA trailer in front of her mother’s house. “She made a point of stopping by and telling us how good it looked.”
St. Bernard Parish adjoins Orleans Parish along the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. It was one of the hardest hit areas, with floodwater depths of 6-20 feet, Hubbard commented. “There are two houses in the parish which did not suffer any damage; the rest were declared uninhabitable.”
The flooded homes must be gutted, Hubbard explained, and then crews come by and paint the studs to get rid of the mold.
Hubbard is a contractor for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Disaster Assistance (CDA), providing low-interest loans to people and businesses affected by disasters and not qualifying for FEMA grants. The Small Business Administrations has a new, modern computer system now, but Hubbard helped to write and maintain their first nationwide loan control system for tracking disaster loans. He spent a year in California following the Northridge earthquake in 1994 helping to maintain and upgrade the software to handle the influx of applicants, which was later dwarfed by the number from Katrina.
Hubbard said the population of St. Bernard Parish was around 80,000 prior to Katrina. “It is estimated at 25-30,000 now, although it is difficult to determine accurately.” Two hundred Parish residents lost their lives due to Katrina. About half the population consisted of retirees, including many policemen and firefighters from New Orleans, Hubbard commented. “Most of the retirees who relocated don’t plan to return.”
“The saddest thing for me is the people just didn’t come back,” said Margaret Harris. Margaret and others helped to cook for about 30-35 people during the week. One day she also got to go out and help paint a house. “It was devastating. You just had to see it. The area we were in was just like a ghost town.”
In one house, on which the volunteers worked, four generations had been living. The grandmother had climbed to the attic to escape the flood waters, but she could not and died.
At night the male volunteers stayed in a tractor trailer in which beds had been added. The women stayed in FEMA trailers.
Nathan Coartney, 16, was one of the younger volunteers. Commenting on his experience, he said,“It was fun, but it was hard at the same time. It was a lot of hard work, but it was fun working for people who needed it.”
Coartney helped with plumbing, carpentry work and roofing; his favorite job was plumbing.
The markings on the houses were haunting reminders of what had occurred in the Parish years before, Coartney said. On the sections of the big X marking housing were the numbers of people who lived in the house, those who had died there, and the pets that had been killed. “There was some houses that had six people who died in the flood.”
Coartney said he expected to see a lot more debris, “but it was just gone...empty lots, no houses, lots where houses were gone and just concrete.”
He got to talk to one homeowner, who was “really excited to see just a little stuff done to their house.”
Coartney said he would like to go again. “I felt like I was needed and was being helpful.” “I thank God that he gave me the strength of body that I was able to help the people of Louisiana,” said another volunteer, Stephen Link. “Since they have lost so much, many of them are sick of heart. So many of the people who saw what we were doing were very appreciative, and I hope that we were able to raise the spirits of those there.
“We did a lot of work there,” he continued. “In two days we had done the work they had planned for us to do the whole week.”
Link said he was saddened by the fact most of the people were not helping each other. “Hopefully by seeing that we would come and freely give help from the heart, maybe they will start doing the same.”
John Harris said the volunteers from the county worked well together. “I enjoyed it. I would go back again in a heartbeat.”
Hubbard said he also wants to go back next year. “I would like to try to make a difference, if I can.”