Episcopal News Service March 1, 2007
Remembering Katrina: Louisiana diocese recovers along with Gulf Coast
By Jerry Hames
[Episcopal News Service] On a vacant corner lot in New Orleans' Ninth Ward, the low-income district where Hurricane Katrina delivered its greatest force, a small band of young teenagers from York, Maine, greeted local residents and helped them pack bags with food and clothing.
"I feel like I'm out here, really helping people," said 15-year-old Lauren Segalla, who with her church friends volunteered last week in the Diocese of Louisiana's (http://www.edola.org) relief program, serving those in greatest need.
People seemed to appear from nowhere to accept offerings of soup, oatmeal, canned fruit, sausage and paper goods. "People know us and look forward to seeing us," said a relief coordinator, who brings volunteers with supplies to that site about once a week.
A few miles away in the Gentilly neighborhood, older teens and adults from St. George's Episcopal Church in York, Maine, worked with sledgehammers, crowbars, shovels and wheelbarrows, tearing away at the damaged interior of a house. Bands of Episcopal volunteers like these from St. George's are led by college student interns, who give up one semester or more of their studies to coordinate and direct the work of entering abandoned houses, sweeping up personal belongings destroyed by water and removing the rotting drywall so the homes can be restored.
It's all part of the diocese's Office of Disaster Response (http://www.edola.org/odr_main.php) program that works with displaced survivors to bring them home. Once survivors return to New Orleans, often to live beside their still-uninhabitable home in a trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), they frequently need to call on the diocese's team of case-management workers to help guide them through the maze of bureaucratic red tape to get a grant or loan to enable them to rebuild.
Many find difficulty, even proving that they have title to their property. "Many people in the Ninth Ward have lived there for four or five generations. They've been here since slavery and their homes have been passed from one family member to another," said James Leeman, in whose garage a satellite Episcopal congregation, Church of All Souls', began as a result of the Episcopal relief work after Hurricane Katrina. Now, 18 months after the hurricane, the congregation of about 50 or 60 has plans to move to a larger place nearby.
Full story and photos:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_82961_ENG_HTM.htm
-- Jerry Hames is editor of Episcopal Life.
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