Mennonite
Central
Committee

A year after Hurricane Katrina

Marla Pierson Lester
August 28, 2006

From New Orleans west to Houston and northeast to Meridian, Mississippi, MCC continues its more than $2 million U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina.

On the first anniversary of the storm — which swept ashore on Aug. 29, causing unimaginable flooding in New Orleans and wreaking devastation throughout the U.S. Gulf Coast — MCC hurricane response workers say needs remain strong even as new outreaches develop.

"People are hurting so much, it's incredible," said Blanca Mackay, a hurricane response worker serving with her Anabaptist congregation, Amor Viviente, in Metairie, Louisiana "But every little thing that you can do, it helps. It brings relief to people. The most important thing, when people hear that people care, that makes a difference."

Some $524,000 U.S. has been spent so far on immediate assistance after the storm, outreaches to evacuees and support of local workers in storm-affected areas.

Long-term projects

Over the next two to three years, MCC will support long-term projects to participate with evacuees in their recovery and to work in collaboration with local churches and organizations in affected areas. Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) and MCC continue as partners in this effort, with MDS providing teams to rebuild homes while MCC supports local projects and workers, provides case management and works at underlying injustices, such as poverty, inequality and racism, that the storm brought to the surface.

In addition to the more than $2 million in donated funds, MCC has also provided $820,000 U.S. of material aid.

Financial issues

Some members of Amor Viviente are living in renovated housing but are still suffering the financial repercussions of evacuation and missed paychecks. Others are still living in FEMA trailers. Some are just beginning to rebuild.

For instance, she says, MDS was able to clear one member's house and clean mold from it, protecting it from further deterioration. But rebuilding stalled for months as the homeowner, assisted by Mackay, sorted through insurance, FEMA and who would pay for further repairs.

This summer, Amor Viviente had four MCC U.S. Summer Service workers who organized a group of volunteers from Minnesota to do repairs for church members. MCC school kits are being given to students returning to school in Louisiana this fall.

The congregation continues to provide items, including MCC meat, to people in the community who are in need. "We have accomplished a lot," Mackay said.

Long road ahead

Yet the road is long. While church members are working, "it's going to take some time for them to recuperate everything they've lost," Mackay said. The church provided a $1,000 grant for each of the 40 families to help make up for time lost to work, beginning with families with the greatest need. "It's a start," Mackay said. "We are planting seeds."

MCC is also funding initiatives that reach into the heart of the devastation. This summer, MCC gave a $30,000 U.S. grant to mobilize and enable urban, primarily African-American church youth to do short-term cleanup work in some of the worst-hit areas of New Orleans.

In Harahan, Louisiana, a New Orleans suburb, hurricane response worker Lawrence Velasquez continues efforts to reach out through Comunidad Cristiana Internacional, where he serves as pastor. One family continues to live in the church building. His work, like the work of Mackay at Amor Viviente, is determined much by needs that continue to arise, such as assistance with homeowner insurance benefits.

In Houston, where some 150,000 evacuees continue to live, a local hurricane response team has begun to do case management to help evacuees, many of them Spanish-speaking, to become self-sufficient again. The work is being done through a $139,621 U.S. grant from the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

Lack of jobs

Case manager Nancy González said she is seeing many clients who continue to receive rental assistance and who have not been able to get a job. "A lot of our families are elderly or single moms (who) can't afford child care," she said.

Many used to work in the hotel industry, she said. The apartments where they were placed in Houston are miles away from the hotels that would be a likely source of employment for them. "They would spend all day riding on a bus to get to the hotel area. It's not feasible for them to try to do that and maintain their children as well," González said.

Difficult transitions

Many people are still emotionally distraught. She's noticed the transition seems particularly hard on youth age 9 to 15. "They want to be back in their own home with their own things," she said. "They're still doing without a lot of what they used to have in Louisiana."

González and a fellow caseworker help evacuees not only connect to basic social services and fill out paperwork. They also meet other needs to help families settle into the Houston area.

In working with a family who needed to complete FEMA paperwork, for instance, González learned their 14-year-old daughter had made the cheerleading squad and basketball team at her new school, but the family could not afford the physical required for her to participate in extracurricular activities. MCC paid for a physical and for shoes, while the school coach funded a cheerleading outfit. The daughter was ecstatic about the shoes, and the mother became a strong supporter of the casework and told other families about it.

Also in Houston, local hurricane response worker Alberto Parchmont continues to provide transportation and other encouragement and aid to evacuees.

Far from normal

In Meridian, Mississippi, MCC supports Lydia Weikel, who moved from Pennsylvania to work with Rebuild East Mississippi. She also is a case manager, working with Mississippi residents whose homes were damaged by Hurricane Katrina or evacuees who have not returned to Louisiana or other damaged coastal areas.

"The needs are really still so very, very great. I know in the North, they don't hear so much anymore. They assume everything's back to normal. And it's really so very, very far from normal," Weikel said.

Three hours from where the storm first hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast, she still sees trees with few branches, their leaves stripped from the force of the wind. "That's just representative of how everything has changed," Weikel said.

Weikel said her organization is still looking for teams of volunteers to work in construction. What she asks of all readers, though, is prayer — for those impacted by Katrina, for those working with them and for those leading recovery efforts.

Don't forget

"We just really, really need your prayers, all of us," she said. "This is a long-term project. ... Don't forget us. Don't forget what's going on down here."

 

Gulf Hurricane Response