Missionary Sees Katrina’s Wrath Still Visible In Gulf States

By Nancy K. Crevier

Vacation generally means leisurely days that defy a schedule, white sand beaches and a tropical sun; or snowy slopes beneath towering mountains and wide, blue skies. Lolling late in bed with a good book, midday lunches with friends and a visit to Broadway spells v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n for others.

Newtown resident Chuck Samson chose to spend his March 11–19 vacation in an area that is struggling to attract tourists; struggling to keep its residents; struggling to take back all that it lost in Hurricane Katrina.

Biloxi, Miss., sustained severe damage when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in August 2005. “Seven out of ten homes in East Biloxi were destroyed or had to be demolished or removed,” said Mr Samson. “All of the city is under 20 feet sea level, so only a few islands of higher land were not covered by the 21-foot storm surge. Essentially,” he said, “all of the city was under water. One hundred fifty people in all of Mississippi were lost to that storm,” he went on. “East Biloxi, an area about three to five square miles, lost 100 lives.”

Along with five other men from the New York Annual Conference (NYAC) of the United Methodist Church, Mr Samson traveled to the Gulf state to offer assistance to residents of East Biloxi, a poor, mostly black part of the city 40 miles east of New Orleans, La., on the Gulf of Mexico.

The group of six workers got off to a rough start, their mission nearly axed before it had begun. “I saw God’s hand in getting us through this mission. We weren’t supposed to do this trip. Not enough people went through the training.”

Mr Samson was the only one of 12 who showed up for the training. “Then two, and then three more signed up. A choir member from Newtown United Methodist offered her help when I was wondering how I was going to find time to book the trip.” An average workday for Mr Samson, including his commute to and from Queens, can be nine or ten hours. To top it off, a raging fever and flu-type illness he contracted just days before the start of the trip threatened to thwart his vacation plans. “But things just started to fall into place,” he recalled.

The group stayed at the St Paul United Methodist Church in Biloxi along with a youth group from another conference of the UMC. The hall provided a space for cooking and eating, and sleeping quarters were in the loft of the church hall. The group was lucky to have access to hot showers, provided within a van equipped by the United Methodist Disaster Response. Other vans from the response team housed generators, carpentry and electrical equipment, yard equipment and HAZMAT equipment; everything the team needed to provide the assistance that they had promised.

Along with the equipment, the group of six NYAC members provided necessary skills to complete repair work. Mr Samson had gone to a trade school to study carpentry as a young man; while he ended up with a degree in accounting, he still has “more than basic skills,” he admitted. “We didn’t know until we got there what we would be doing,” he said, “so there was some anxiety.”

That anxiety was quickly relieved when he realized his other team members included a retired contractor, a retired custodian, and another carpenter. Even the opera singer among them provided a ministry of music when he was not wielding a hammer, said Mr Samson. “We just had all sorts of talents that we needed.” As a matter of fact, the small but efficient group found that they were able to complete a lot more than some of the larger teams working on other houses.

Mr Samson’s team focused on one home, owned by Erleen Spieller, a retired schoolteacher who is a member at St Paul’s. When Katrina blew her last breath over Biloxi, Ms Spieller was left with five feet of water standing in her home. The high winds had torn away parts of the tin roof and caused other structural damage. Unethical contractors who preyed on the storm victims in early months provided only shoddy workmanship, used up insurance money and disappeared. Ms Spieller was fortunate to not be taken in by these here-and-gone workers, but like so many others in Biloxi, she had no other place to go. Her insurance was not adequate to cover the cost of making the home habitable again. Were it not for the aide offered by her church, she would be homeless.

As it is, home for her now is a tiny FEMA trailer parked beside her house, where she lives with her mother. “She has been there for six months,” said Mr Samson. “There are no windows. It is not comfortable.”

Her house looks out over a parking lot of FEMA trailers and empty lots that once were home to her neighbors. Denuded trees wave bare branches against the sky and grass struggles to break through the layers of mud and salt residue that coats the yards. “We saw houses being removed at the rate of one a day by out-of-state contractors,” said Mr Samson. “Half of the houses left standing still need to be removed.” Storm damage was too great to replace or repair those homes.

His mission was to move Ms Spieller’s home ever closer to becoming a livable space. The team put down a new tin roof, paid for with some of the $900 donated by the Newtown United Methodist Church. When it was discovered that the frame was inadequate to support the roof, they removed an entire damaged corner of the house and replaced it.

Other Methodist conferences will continue to send work teams, said Mr Samson, until the repairs to the home are completed. Ms Spieller can look forward to moving into her home by summer, it is hoped.

As with his previous mission work to Bolivia, Mr Samson was impressed by the lack of desperation he sensed among the people he met in Biloxi, despite the massive amount of destruction he witnessed. “The people I met in the church have remained faithful [in the face of the damage caused by Katrina],” said Mr Samson. “People have survived it and continue to be hopeful because of their faith.”

He went on to say, though, “This area will never be the same. People had lived here a long time and now they are dispersed. Most will not come back.”

There is still much to be done in Biloxi and surrounding communities, stressed Mr Samson. “You’re here, you’re doing a good thing. But when you leave here you realize that you’re renovating a pebble on the beach. The need is very big.”

Monetary donations are best at this time and 100 percent of donated funds find their way to relief efforts. To donate, go to www.gbgm-umc.org/umcor/ and select Hurricanes 2005: Where The Money Goes. If you have more time than money to donate, work teams are still being organized by the Methodist conferences. It is not necessary to be a United Methodist Church member to take part in a work team, Mr Samson said. Volunteers can sign up at www.nyac.com.

For Mr Samson, mission work is a calling he cannot ignore. “It is something I felt a need to do. We are called to help the least of our brothers and sisters.”