Youth Continue Rebuild Efforts
At the end of May, 2006, 15 youth and leaders, drove (yes, drove!) to Long Beach, Mississippi, on Youth Mission 2006 to continue the rebuilding efforts following 2005's hurricane Katrina. Long Beach First UMC hosted the team, housing them and providing a kitchen and showers and work assignments. The crew endured stifling heat and humidity rarely if ever experienced in our dry Montana climate as they worked on Miss Joyce's house doing drywall, priming, painting, and also landscaping. Miss Joyce, a retired school teacher, was thrilled to move so much closer to her "move in" date.
Drywall training, Saturday, March 18, 2006, in preparation for the adult Gulf Coast Mission Trip
We learned to hang sheetrock, mud and tape . . . and more!
Notes from the Gulf:
I took a few moments to walk by a field near the Pass Road Elementary School in Gulfport, Mississippi, where we are housed, before beginning this update on March 29. I was enchanted by the birdsong floating through the humid air, from the tops of trees -- the ones still standing: Notes of hope in a devasted land.
On Saturday, March 25, our group of 33 rendevouzed in New Orleans and caravanned to Gulfport, Mississippi. (This is as close as we got to a group picture. Not pictured are Carol Vaughan, Kay Marker, and Mary Jane Helgeson, who is behind the camera.)
We took a short - but gripping - side trip through the Ninth Ward and St. Bernard's Parish. We saw the now-repaired levee that sent flood waters 20 feet deep into the area. Remember the media images of water up to the rafters and people standing on their roofs? Only 2% of the residents have moved back, and there are only a handful of FEMA trailers that we saw.
FEMA trailers are not restricted to any particular economic or geographical standard. You see them in the poorest as well as the more affluent neighborhoods.
We are housed at Pass Road Elementary School in Gulfport, and it's an easy jaunt by foot or van to the mess tent, showers and laundry located at the Pass Road Baptist Church. The relief workers' "camp" and organization of teams and work is done by the North Carolina Baptist Men's Disaster Relief. It is truly an amazing operation.
We have to remind ourselves on occasion just why we are here, as we deal with our housing situation: air mattresses that go flat in the night, the chorus of snores and sounds, having our "nests" moved to accomodate a school program, curfew and lights out. The school personnel have been wonderful hosts and on our last day we arrived, dirty and weary, to find lovely heartfelt notes of thanks from the students of Pass Road Elementary on our "bunks."
On Sunday we went to Long Beach First UMC and had a wonderful time doing storytelling, puppetry, strings-&-stories, and youth activities with their congregation, as well as sharing in worship. They made us feel very welcome and at home. 70 of their families lost everything in the hurricane and all are in the processes of recovery. We were able to tour the storm surge area, which came up to the street in front of the church. The church suffered wind damage but escaped the brunt of the surge. The storm surge, however, literally blew away, swept away everything in its path -- beautiful houses, historic landmarks, resorts, businesses, churches. An amazing amount of work has gone into the removal of the tons of debris. Nothing is left but the concrete slabs, perhaps a sign pole here and there, and a steeple. A set of front porch steps sits eerily alone amid the remaining debris. The surge came inland just as far as the coastline train tracks. The tracks look lie a boundary -- everything south of the tracks is gone, north of the tracks the damage is inescapable but structures are still standing.
On Monday, we got our assignments, assessed the needs of our locations, obtained supplies from the armory warehouse and began work. Four of our teams combined into two and worked on two houses in the Forest Heights development. In Sonja's house, the work included sheetrocking, taping and mudding, sanding, priming and painting. Carlson's house needed to have the second bathroom stripped, wallpaper stripped, drywall work, painting, and more throughout the home.
Team five worked in connection with Long Beach First UMC and their District. They did similar work on the District Superintendent's house and then move to work on the church secretary's home. Our First UMC Youth group will return in May to continue the work in Gulfport. Wednesday, a few members of the four teams joined for yet another team to prime and paint the house of an elderly woman and her daughter. The two had ridden out the storm together in that house, listening to the trees cracking and falling around them. Even before the work began, just during introductions, the ladies joyously gave hugs to all our workers.
I worked on Sonjas's house the entire week. The neighborhood is a working class deveolpment built approximately in the 1970's. Most houses are of modest brick construction. While wind damage is prevalent, this neighborhood also experienced flooding. The storm surge came up a nearby river, pushing both the river and sea water out of the banks and across land. Sonja's house filled with 3 to 4 feet of water. Her dog, Mia, had to be left as there was no room at the shelter for animals. This spunky and smart poodle survived by floating on a mattress for 3 days. She got lots of attention and playtime when we took our breaks!
When we walked into Sonja's house, one phrase from drywall training echoed in our heads. "Don't make the tapers mad." Guess what? We were the tapers and we were mad. The group that had done the majority of the sheetrocking had done a less-than-ideal job, leaving gaps and uneven seams. but we forged ahead. The main bathroom as well as some smaller areas, like closets and hallway corners, still needed sheetrocking which we finished by Wednesday. When we left on Friday, we had completed taping and mudding throughout the house, primed and painted the living room, family room, two bedrooms, closets, and bathroom, and caulked the outside windows. The kitchen and one bathroom still need priming and painting. It was an amazing amount of work, done well and with a lot of laughter and energy.
Everywhere we go, from the final security check at Billing Logan International to our homeowner hosts to the checker at the grocery store, we are thanked. Our hearts go out to these hurricane victims, and their gratitude is extended tenfold.
What began as a group of 33 has developed into an incredible team of friends and workers, a celebration of cooperation, ingenuity, laughter, and caring. Thursday evening many of us took the opportunity to get out a bit, away from the 500 plus people at the mess tent, to tour the area, find local fare, and return to share new experiences.
“Where y’all from?” was the second most frequent phrase our Gulf Coast mission team heard last week. The first was, “Thank you. Thank you so much for coming to help.” Here are some statistics about the region in which we worked:
¨ Hurricane Katrina killed 238 Mississippians
¨ The storm left behind $75 billion of damage
¨ 30% of the Gulf Coast population has left and may never return
¨ 85% of the businesses in Gulf Port were destroyed and are only just now beginning to come back
The work in the area is broken into 3 phases: emergency, relief (the current phase), and long term recovery. Our team had a major impact on the rebuilding efforts for 7 homes in the Gulf Port and Long Beach communities. They also had a major impact on the people they served, offering help, friendship, laughter, encouragement, listening ears, and strong shoulders. Thanks and blessings to you all for supporting this amazing effort.
THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE
By Robin Harper
I returned from the hurricane-ravaged city of Gulfport, Mississippi, a month ago and I’m still at a loss to make much sense of my experience. But maybe that’s the point — hurricanes and other natural disasters aren’t much for making sense!
I joined 33 other Montanans on March 25 in New Orleans, LA, where we formed a caravan and traveled on to Gulfport, MS, for a week of rebuilding homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Our group met up other groups of volunteers from across the United States. We were approximately 525 in number. The parking lot of a church on a busy street in Gulfport was our headquarters. We were a varied group in deed.
In the seven months since Katrina hit the gulf coast much of demolition and debris removal has been done. Some families have returned to their renovated homes and now focus on landscaping. Many families continue to live in FEMA trailers while trying to juggle work, family and major home repairs not to mention dealing with the bureaucracy of the federal government and insurance red tape. Still many others do not have the resources or the ability to leave their situations even though some neighborhoods are still without electricity. And in some cases, families returned after Katrina to find that their homes were no longer there at all. Still today the tide brings in reminders of what Katrina took out to sea last August.
While making repairs we spent time visiting with the homeowners. We listened to their stories about Katrina and the wave of reality that hit after her departure. The news accounts I saw in the safety of my living room did not begin to tell me the whole story. The snippets and sound bites on CNN certainly caught my attention but they didn’t compare to listening to a mother and daughter describe the day that 28 feet of water overtook their quaint little homes on the bayou.
At some point I think we can’t help but think — “Why do people live on the coast where hurricanes are an almost certainty?” “Why do people live in Tornado Alley or on a fault line?” Probably, for the same reasons I live in Montana — this is my home — this is where my family lives — I enjoy my surroundings. Let’s face it, relocation, in the best of circumstances, is difficult. Challenges wait like starting a new career, finding a home, helping the kids adjust to new schools and dealing with the sadness of leaving friends and family. Oh, and let’s not forget the expense of relocation. How do you leave if there is no job waiting for you elsewhere?
How do you leave a job when you feel a sense of duty to continue your service? What if you’re still making mortgage payments on a home that has been destroyed and the government won’t let you rebuild? And I can’t help but think it might be easier to deal with the trauma that my family might have endured if we stayed close to relatives and dear friends.
I also fall prey to thinking, “What kind of difference can a bunch of volunteers make?” “There is too much to do!” “We will never see the finished product!” But our labors were not done in vain. The volunteers before us did the demolition work, replaced roofs, plumbing, wiring and sheetrock. We also replaced sheetrock. We taped, mudded, sanded (mudded, sanded, mudded, sanded), primed and painted. Volunteers to follow will install bathroom fixtures, flooring, lighting and appliances.
The work I did, however inconsequential as it may seem, was important. It was obviously important to the homeowners and their families. They are regaining a sense of security and perhaps a feeling of hope. Some of these people had lost faith in the system. No matter what they tried, it didn’t seem like they would ever “be home” again. But through the efforts of volunteers many people are back home again.
An image I found to be helpful during my stay was the idea that if you’re in a room that is completely dark, you do not need to flip on every light switch in the room to navigate about the room. You need only a steady beam of light to find your way. Sometimes I need only be that steady beam of light for someone else and nothing more.
