[StBernard] Grants to help finance housing for volunteers in St. Bernard Parish

[Westley Annis]

Grants to help finance housing for volunteers in St. Bernard Parish

FEMA is pulling funding as of Thursday from a program that has attracted
volunteers who have gutted 1,500 St. Bernard Parish homes free of charge.

But St. Bernard Parish has come up with $310,000 in grants from three
private companies to pay for repairs and maintenance at the Willie Smith
School in Violet, where volunteers can be housed and will continue to gut
homes, St. Bernard Parish President Henry "Junior'' Rodriguez said in a news
release on the parish's website, www.sbpg.net.

"FEMA left us high and dry,'' and will close Camp Premier, the tent city
housing volunteers working in St. Bernard, on June 1, Rodriguez said Monday
as he toured a building where work is being done at Willie Smith School.

David Dysart, head of recovery for St. Bernard Parish government, is
overseeing the building project at the school. The School Board is allowing
volunteers to live there and the Emergency Communities group to serve food
there.

"Thank goodness for this operation here,'' Rodriguez said.

Shell Oil donated about $160,000 for the project, and El Paso gas donated
about $125,000, he said. A third company, that wants to remain anonymous at
this time, donated about $25,000.

Dysart said the volunteers groups AmeriCorps and Habitat for Humanity, are
working at the school, converting the gym into a food service location and
classrooms into sleeping quarters for volunteers. Other volunteer groups
gutting homes will stay there, including Operation Blessing, Samaritan's
Purse, National Relief Network and Hilltop Rescue.

Dysart said he probably has 800 volunteers ready to mov to Willie Smith
School and then hopes to get the number of volunteers back up to 1,50, which
it previously has been.

Andre Doyle, of Greensborough, N.C., has been working in St. Bernard since
February as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. He said he felt he needed
to come help and emphasizes that people in other parts of the country "have
no idea'' how bad it was in St. Bernard after the storm. "I tell at home
it's more than what you see on TV.''

Bret Olson of the Cincinnati area is working with AmeriCorps in safety. He
said when he hears volunteers on phones talking to people back home they are
often saying, "TV doesn't do it justice for how bad it is here.''

Rodriguez met with some volunteers and told them how much St. Bernard
residents appreciate their work. "You will never know how much you are
helping,'' Rodriguez said.