Alabama area, one year after storm, still relying on hope, volunteers

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. (ABP) — Hurricane Katrina was the first in an interconnected series of tragedies that Amy Walker says left her feeling helpless and lost.

But, like the part of Alabama she lives in, her life is being rebuilt thanks to feats of coordination between relief organizations, Baptist and other church volunteers and government agencies.

“God has answered my prayers in more ways than one,” she said Aug. 3, shortly after a tear-soaked ceremony in which she received the keys to a new mobile home — “a miracle,” she told a group of well-wishers and reporters.

Although Katrina did its most spectacular damage in areas to the west — New Orleans and the Mississippi coast — the storm surge was still plenty damaging as far east as Alabama. It left about 1,700 homeless and wrecked scores of shrimp boats based in Grand Bay and Bayou La Batre, neighboring fishing hamlets located where Mobile Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico.

The Walkers, who live in Grand Bay, lost the manufactured home they had been living in to Katrina's vicious storm surge. Then, when visiting what was left of the home to salvage whatever possessions she could, Walker fell through the weakened floor, seriously injuring herself.

Resulting surgeries and complications left her with deep-vein thrombosis, which has made it impossible for her to work, difficult for her to walk and in seriously compromised health.

With mounting medical bills, a mountain of prescription drugs and a husband who had to quit his job to care for her and their three daughters, the 30-year-old Walker felt she was at the end of her rope. Like many Katrina victims, the five family members had been living in a cramped trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Remembering a relief organization that had provided her family with help at Christmastime, Walker went to see Henry “Digger” Creel in the Volunteers of America Southeast office in nearby Bayou La Batre.

“When I walked into Mr. Digger's office, I didn't feel like a number anymore. I felt like a person,” she said in the living room of her new home.

Creel — a Baptist minister — coordinates housing relief in the Alabama portion of the hurricane zone for Volunteers of America, which is a nationwide faith-based service organization. When he heard the Walkers' story, Creel resolved to find a way to help the family gain some financial stability.

He coordinated with the Mobile County Long Term Recovery Committee, which includes government agencies, denominational relief groups and other organizations. The groups received private and government funding to buy the trailer from Clayton Homes, a national mobile-home manufacturer with a regional office in Mobile, located about 40 miles away. The company sold the home to the committee below cost, and also donated appliances and some furniture for the house.

In addition, Clayton Homes' regional manager donated the first $1,000 to a college scholarship fund that Volunteers of America set up for the Walker girls — who are ages 7, 9 and 11.

Amy Walker, who is a member of Friendship Baptist Church in Grand Bay, said before she went to Creel's office to ask for help, she “felt like it was the end of the world for me…. I got tired of waking up and hearing my kids ask me, 'Mama, what are we going to do about a house?'”

Of her decision to go to Volunteers of America, she said, “I felt like God sent me there that day.”

Creel said the Walkers are representative of hundreds of other families in the blue-collar area whose lives were turned upside down by Katrina.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Volunteers of America and groups such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Alabama distributed provisions to storm victims in Bayou La Batre. Creel then set up an office there for long-term relief work, where he helps find housing solutions for area residents. Most of them are still in FEMA trailers or other temporary housing.

Aiding in that work as well, Creel said, have been teams from CBF of Alabama and its counterparts in Georgia and other states. They have come to do long-term rehabilitation work, such as gutting and restoring flooded homes.

“We've had that ongoing relationship with CBF,” he said.

He said church-based volunteer workers have kept hope alive in the region, which was already depressed due to the American shrimping industry's financial woes. “Without the faith-based response … it just would not have happened,” Creel said. “The faith-based organizations that stepped up to the plate all over Mississippi and Louisiana and here, that made the difference.”

But the area's biggest long-term needs are for a steady flow of volunteers and government funding. Creel said funds for rebuilding have been slow to come from state and federal agencies — and when they do come, it's with a host of restrictions.

In the wake of the storm, Bayou La Batre native Lillie Kraver went to work for Creel's organization as a liaison to government agencies.

“I had to, because I know the people,” she said. “It's home and I had to fight to get as much funding for them as possible, so they can have some sort of normalcy back in their lives…. And without God's help, there's no way we could do this. The doors that he has opened, it has been amazing.”

Creel said one of his biggest fears is that the volunteer stream will begin to dry up, now that much of the nation's memories of Katrina are beginning to fade. For instance, with the school year getting underway, the youth groups and teams of college students who had come in large numbers all summer won't be coming again until winter or spring break.

“As is the case in these types of disasters, a year later we're out of the spotlight, we're out of the focus,” Creel said. “We still have a tremendous need for volunteers.”

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