10 years on, New Orleans and several other communities across the south continue to rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina --- volunteers from all over the world came together to help rebuild --- including several from the Capital Region.
Katrina, the most damaging hurricane in United States history, collided with the north central Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005 - devastating Louisiana and Mississippi with strong winds, a record storm surge, and biblical flooding. Four-fifths of the city of New Orleans was submerged after levees were breached and flood walls protecting the city collapsed.
Reverend Sandy Damhof is the Protestant Campus Minister at the Interfaith Center of the University at Albany. "We got involved in our response to Katrina mostly because a lot of students were watching TV: it was as we were moving back onto campus that it happened. And we have a long history of doing a service project, either during spring break or winter break, so it just seemed natural for us to go in January. We recruited students - I usually travel with a group of anywhere from 12 to 20 students and a couple of chaperones, and we just decided that that year we would do that."
Damhof's team spent long hours mucking out houses and lending emotional support to flood victims. "It was the most emotional experience some of my students ever had. In fact some of them, I think, went into therapy when they got back. Because it was so fresh and so raw. I mean they were still doing house-to-house searches finding dead bodies."
The team returned during spring break. There would be eight subsequent visits by new groups of students of mixed faiths. As the years went by, public attention turned to other news. "The next big story comes along and you forget. Especially after the first couple years when we returned. I think it was important for us to tell that story and to say New Orleans is still in trouble and they need a lot of help yet. It's still continuing. We don't go there anymore because now they need more construction skills and skills we don't have, but there is still a lot of work to be done."
Janet Grigsby is a senior lecturer in the Sociology Department at Schenectady's Union College - which first sent volunteers to New Orleans in 2005. She's been involved in Katrina relief since December 2006. "I usually take about 15 students down. We take applications in the spring and early fall. It's open to all students, no matter what their major is. they don't have to have had any sociology."
They do learn about the culture and what it means to be a volunteer, attend a tool workshop before spending two weeks down south. Grigsby's group partners with Habitat For Humanity, staying at a school in St. Bernard Parish that had been gutted down to its cinder block walls. "It had electricity because they had strung the orange extension cords from room to room from classroom to classroom because and we had one four foot fluorescent bulb that lighted the rooms. We lived there in that school but then we drove a half hour over to New Orleans east to work on houses in the upper 9th ward where Habitat was already busy and re-habbing places."
The National Hurricane Center determined that 1,836 fatalities were directly attributed to the storm, with estimates of damage exceeding $100 billion. "It was lifechanging for all of us I believe. We were all transformed by it, to see the horror of it, it was still there in 2006. In St. Bernard parish the only store that was open was a Walgreen's. Nothing, literally nothing else was open. Several students who went with me in 2006 had gone in 2005. When we came back, there was so much strong feeling about that we said we wanna make this part of our regular program at Union. Given our structure and so forth, we decided that the best way to make it a part of what we do here was to turn it into a course, which we have carried on under my leadership, I teach the course in the sociology department and we go back every December to continue doing recovery work."
For many people, "Hurricane Katrina" invokes images of New Orleans - but many other parts of Louisiana and neighborhing Mississippi were impacted by the storm. George McDearmon is pastor of the Ballston Lake Baptist Church, which lended assistance to the Mississippi's Lakeshore Baptist Church. "That community was devastated. The church properties were destroyed. The only thing they recovered was their pulpit, and I believe a cross."
One of the church deacons initially traveled south with members of the Clifton Park Community Church. When he told the folks in Ballston Lake about his experience, they wanted to help. From 2009 through 2014 - for six consecutive months of January - a contingent from Ballston Lake would travel to Lakeshore where they would take assignments with work crews building and rehabbing houses - and attending to citizens' spiritual needs. "I was in charge of what was called the ministry team, a team of men and women who had had contact with the Lakeshore Baptist Church following Katrina, and we would go out in the community to minister to people."
McDearmon says the establishing of new relationships in a faith-based common cause was spiritually enhancing and personally rewarding. The fruits of their labor will be observed Sunday August 30th: Lakeshore Baptist Church will celebrate completion of the construction of a new church building with a dedication service.
New Orleans and neighborhood communities continue rebuilding: On a visit Thursday to Louisiana, President Barack Obama called New Orleans "a beacon of resilience and strength." "Because of you, the people of New Orleans working together, this city is moving in the right direction. And I have never been more confident that together, we will get to where we need to go. You inspire me!"
