[StBernard] NO SLOWING DOWN

[Westley Annis]

NO SLOWING DOWN
Volunteers still working to get families back in their homes nearly 14
months after Katrina 
Monday, November 06, 2006
By Karen Turni Bazile
St. Bernard/Plaquemines bureau 

While Martin Cure Jr. relaxed on a bench in his Poydras back yard, breathing
with the assistance of an oxygen tank, wife Josephine Cure explained how her
husband's frail health and their lack of flood insurance has made rebuilding
their flooded family home a monumental struggle. 

 
So when Zack Rosenburg, a Washington, D.C., lawyer started a group called
the St. Bernard Project to rebuild homes of people in need, the Cures were
grateful for any assistance he and his ever-changing cast of volunteers
could offer. On a recent day, volunteers from Alabama installed drywall in
their one-story home, which steeped in about 4 feet of water after Hurricane
Katrina. 

Another team of volunteers from Austin, Texas, drove in with enough skills
and tools to completely frame an exterior wall blown out by Katrina's storm
surge and install windows in less than three hours. 

"That looks good. I like that," said Josephine Cure, 68, who recently broke
her arm. "My children wanted me just to brick up the wall, but now I can
show off a Christmas tree in the window." 

"A Christmas tree would look good in there," replied Steve Counts, a
volunteer from Austin Church of Glad Tidings. "We're glad the Lord gave us
the opportunity to bless you." 

It's early November, more than 14 months after Hurricane Katrina inundated
nearly every home and business in St. Bernard, and an army of volunteers
from countless service and religious organizations continues to gut and
rebuild an extremely grateful parish. Lodging camps for volunteers remain in
full swing even though there is a downtick in the number of volunteers,
since many were college students who returned to school. 


Has his hands full 

Brendan Hendrix, field supervisor for Hilltop Rescue and Relief and the
Inter-American Restoration Corp., two nonprofits helping with the recovery,
is managing two facilities that house and feed many of the volunteers in St.
Bernard Parish. Camp Rowley is on the campus of C.F. Rowley Elementary in
Chalmette, and Camp Hope is on the campus of Willie Smith Elementary School
in Violet. Soon, a third facility will open on the campus of Chalmette
Middle that will house mainly volunteers from Crossroads Missions, a group
that will focus on rebuilding. 

For now, the school district is not using the flooded schools. Hendrix said
the volunteer groups collectively are looking for a site they can secure for
the five years they expect to be needed for the recovery. 

Hendrix said the volunteers, who hail from groups ranging from AmeriCorps,
Habitat for Humanity and Samaritan's Purse to individual churches across the
country, have gutted about 3,000 homes in St. Bernard Parish. Now, with the
gutting job winding down, the volunteers are focusing their efforts on
helping people rebuild. 

"This is not rocket science," Rosenburg said. "The recipe is simple:
Volunteers plus building supplies or donations put people back in their
homes." 

His group has financing from United Way to start rebuilding homes for 60
needy families. 


Victims as inspiration 

Volunteers, many of whom have returned several times to the parish, say the
resiliency and patience of the residents is amazing. 

Nancy Mitchell from Soddy Daisy, Tenn., has come to the area six times since
the hurricane, each time raising money through her church and friends to
return to the task of helping a community get back on its feet. 

"I still have an overwhelming feeling to help the people of Louisiana," said
Mitchell, whose volunteer work in Slidell and St. Bernard includes gutting
houses, distributing food and even running injured volunteers to the
hospital. Two weeks ago, she was helping clean Camp Rowley. 

Hendrix, a Baton Rouge-area boilermaker, said volunteer groups initially
bunked in St. Tammany Parish and commuted to St. Bernard. Faced with having
to find lodging for 500 volunteers in March, he got the blessing of school
officials and opened Camp Rowley, but not before furiously working with
other volunteers to build separate male and female showers, and prepare a
kitchen and dorm. Since then, the camp has housed volunteers from 49 states.


When FEMA shuttered the federally operated Camp Premier volunteer site in
the summer, the parish outfitted the Smith school in Violet and named it
Camp Hope. The parish initially ran Camp Hope but has since turned its
operation over to Hendrix. 

Inside Camp Hope is a hub that resembles a Pentagon war room, complete with
large white dry-erase boards that plot complicated volunteer schedules. 

Inside the room, Melissa Le, 26, a recent graduate of the University of
California at San Diego and an operations coordinator for AmeriCorps, spends
her days scheduling tasks for the 200 and 500 volunteers usually housed at
Camp Hope. She assigns who guts which houses, who delivers and cleans the
tools and who calls residents to ask whether they have any requests on what
should be salvaged. 


Embarrassment of riches 

Le and Patrick Semansky, the Habitat for Humanity volunteer coordinator at
Camp Hope, have been there for about a month. Semansky said he hopes to stay
about 12 months. "I came down in January with a college group, and it blew
me away," said Semansky, a recent college graduate of Santa Clara University
in California. 

"Four months after the storm, I thought it would be better. I was a wreck
when I went home" because he couldn't handle everything at his home being OK
and having functioning utilities when he knew how devastated St. Bernard
still was. 

"There's nowhere else I'd rather be right now," Semansky said. 

Other volunteers agree. Their work in St. Bernard, they say, is a way for
them to give thanks for their own blessings. 

"All of us have been blessed financially and with good families and with
great health," said Counts, of the Austin church group. "You look at what
has happened here, and these people are here not of their own hand. When you
get down here, you want to stay longer." 

. . . . . . . 

Hendrix is a clearinghouse for funneling volunteers to the various projects.
Hendrix can be reached at brendan at hilltoprescue.org. People who still need
their houses gutted can come in person to Camp Hope or call 682-9267 for
information. For rebuilding assistance, Rosenburg's office is at 8324 Parc
Place in Chalmette. 

. . . . . . . 

Karen Turni Bazile can be reached at kturni at timespicayune.com or (504)
352-2539.