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United Methodists mobilize to help evacuees at Astrodome

Sep. 5, 2005	 News media contact:   Tim  Tanton * (615) 7425470*
Nashville {488}

NOTE: NOTE: Photographs and related coverage are available at
http://umns.umc.org.

By Steve Smith*

HOUSTON (UMNS) - Patricia Groves said she couldn't live with herself if
she stayed inside her air-conditioned house during Labor Day weekend
while so many people were suffering just across town.

A member of St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Houston, Groves was
one of 1,000 or so United Methodists joining volunteers from other
faith-based groups at Reliant Center, the city's massive convention and
sports complex, to organize and distribute donated clothing,
nonperishable food and hygiene items for hundreds of thousands of
Hurricane Katrina's victims.

"I cannot sit on my you-know-what and not do anything when these people
have absolutely nothing but the clothes on their backs," Groves said.
"The first night I was here, I saw this 4-and-a-half-year-old running
down the ramp at the Astrodome. She opened her arms, and I picked her
up. She was wet, her diaper needed changing, she was dirty, but she had
a smile on her face because she finally got in some place that was
air-conditioned.

"Everybody was just so glad to be someplace where they could lay down
because they were so exhausted."

More than 15,000 mostly African Americans packed the floor of the
Reliant Astrodome, while 3,000 were staying at Reliant Arena and another
8,000 at Reliant Center, all in the same complex. Another 6,000 evacuees
flooded local shelters, and the George R. Brown Convention Center and
Hewlett-Packard Center also housed at least 2,000.

Another 5,000 residents from New Orleans stayed in hotels, but many were
running out of money to pay for rooms and showing up at the Astrodome
for help, an American Red Cross official said. Texas Gov. Rick Perry
ordered state officials to plan to airlift 250,000 evacuees to other
states offering help.

Most of the evacuees at the Astrodome and convention centers endured
three-hour rides on chartered buses from New Orleans nearly 350 miles
away, some aboard rickety school buses with no air-conditioning.

The Astrodome crowd was so large that locals referred to the former
baseball and football stadium as "Dome City," a region so huge that it
now had its own ZIP code (77230), police force of 160 officers, and
thousands of land and cellular telephone lines. But this was a city in
desperate need, and United Methodists were working around the clock to
ensure evacuees don't fall through the cracks.

Four cities of cots

Under guidance from Mike Firenza, director of health, wellness and
recreation at St. Luke's, and the Rev. Jason Burnham, the church's
evangelism pastor, previous hurricane victims, well-paid bankers,
housewives, college students, people of every race, and National Guard
troops not even called into duty toiled around the clock to organize in
neat piles everything from bottled water to blouses and britches,
toothbrushes to Tampax, corn flakes to curling irons.

They were storing the donations in an enormous building beside the
Astrodome normally reserved for horse, car and boat shows but called
"the warehouse" by relief workers. Firenza and Burnham were heading the
donation organization project for the United Methodist Church's
Houston-based Texas Annual (regional) Conference.

Outside the warehouse, a nonstop stream of cars, SUVs, tractor-trailer
trucks and pickups pulled up so volunteers could unload donations. In
the blistering afternoon sun, volunteers emptied a tractor-trailer of
more than 70,000 bottles of spring water, followed the next day by 2,000
hygiene kits crammed into a 24-foot-long trailer truck from Happy
Discount Movers in Grapevine near Dallas.

Early Sunday morning, Sept. 4, Firenza tried to figure out where to put
seven truckloads of clothes donated from "Dr. Phil" McGraw, the TV
psychologist, and the J.C. Penney department store company. Oprah
Winfrey also was sending truckloads of donations, Firenza added.

"We have four cities out here of cots and thousands of people," he said.
"All of those people are getting clothes, getting hygiene products,
water, fruit, food. They have 24-hour snacks, two hot meals a day, and
sandwiches at lunch. It is going really, really well.

"I wish we had eight times the space and 20 times as many volunteers."

One of those "cities" served as a destination where evacuees received
clothes, water, food, medical attention and showers before being bused
to relief centers in Dallas, San Antonio and other Texas cities, as well
as Ft. Bliss, Ark., where officials agreed to handle the overflow from
the Reliant Center.

Compelled to help

At the warehouse, Donald Bennett, a member of St. John's United
Methodist Church in Houston, said he lost nearly everything in 1983 to a
hurricane, including water and electricity for two weeks, and knew he
needed to help when he saw Katrina's destruction. Bennett said he
unloaded trucks, moved donations into the warehouse, helped organize the
operations, and performed any other task during 10-hour days.

Kathleen Buttolph spent most of Sept. 4 organizing clothes and shoes
into their proper size piles in a section of a convention hall reserved
for distributing donations to evacuees. Buttolph, a member of Wesley
United Methodist Church in Johnson City, Tenn., had traveled to Houston
late the day before for a friend's wedding.

"I couldn't help but come here," said Buttolph, as she placed a pair of
children's sandals in their proper pile. "It seems like you shouldn't be
doing anything else."


Next door in the warehouse, Sandi Allen of Houston's West University
United Methodist Church, said she showed up at about 6 p.m. Sept. 3 and
worked straight through to the following morning so she could use her
gifts of "organizing and expediting" with the mountains of donations.
Her work allowed Firenza to go home and get some sleep.

"I felt compelled that I need to do this," said Allen, whose voice
boomed out through the cavernous warehouse as she issued directions to
volunteers. "I saw that they needed logistical skills, so I kissed my
husband goodbye and told him I'm going to the Dome. That was yesterday
afternoon, and I'm sure he has no idea where I am."

Brenda Greenleaf, a member of Houston's Windsor Village United Methodist
Church, said the church was rounding up hundreds of congregants to
volunteer at one of the other convention centers. Her son, Lorenzo
Morgan, flew a helicopter from Houston to New Orleans to help with
rescue efforts.

"There are people who need help, and if it were me, I would certainly
hope people would help my family," said Greenleaf, as she folded a pair
of boy's jeans bound for the knee-deep pile in front of her. "We're
going to pray and do whatever they need me to do. We're going to take
the whole church over to the convention center."

A traumatized survivor

Bob Mueller, a banker and member of St. Luke's United Methodist Church,
helped set up cots and distributed clothes, diapers, baby formula, food
and personal hygiene items.

"One lady had just gotten here on Thursday, had been in the water for
four days in New Orleans and finally was washed ashore," he said. "She
was exhausted, mentally and physically. She was traumatized by the dead
bodies she had run across in the water. She was filthy, and all she
wanted to do was get a shower, some food and some sleep."

Joseph Guzman, a member of Christ United Methodist Church in Sugar Land,
a Houston suburb, said he had worked on two flood-relief efforts when he
served in the military and was considering going to Louisiana with his
chainsaw to help with relief efforts.

"When we were helping people off the buses on the first night, I saw the
smiles on their faces and the tears in their eyes when they saw family
members they hadn't seen in five days," he said. "That's what I'm here
for."

In the Astrodome, Laura Caillouet, a member of Munholland United
Methodist Church in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, who now attends
Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, said she felt compelled to
help residents of her former city. She added that family members saw
their homes damaged by Katrina, but some friends lost all of their
possessions.

United Methodists throughout Texas also went into action after city
officials in Houston began re-routing buses packed with evacuees
throughout Texas. More than 12,000 evacuees packed the floor of Reunion
Arena, the former pro basketball venue in Dallas, and another 25,000 New
Orleans residents stayed at the former Kelly Air Force Base and shelters
in San Antonio.

Grateful evacuees

Many evacuees said they were grateful for the outpouring of support from
Houstonians and wished that they could repay them. Others, like Marilyn
Johnson, were frantic as they combed the crowds for any sights of
relatives. Many held cardboard signs on which the names of relatives and
friends were scrawled in crayon, ink or black charcoal.

"I'm trying to find my brother, he's trying to find his mother, and he's
trying to find his sister," said Johnson, a member of Brooks United
Methodist Church in New Orleans, as family members pushed a shopping
cart full of donations and two young children outside the warehouse.
"The last time we saw them, they were in New Orleans trying to get out
of town. We don't even know if they're here, or if they're dead back in
New Orleans."

Donald Franklin, also of New Orleans, escaped the rising floodwaters by
fleeing to a neighborhood school before boarding a bus bound for
Houston. He said coming to Houston was almost like stepping into the
Promised Land.

"I now feel like everything is going to be OK," Franklin said. "Every
day, I feel better and better."

*Smith is a freelance writer based in Dallas.

News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org

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