Before Katrina, workers at Lutheran Episcopal Services was one of the first groups to send volunteers to help rebuild homes and now they are one of the last one’s left:
Five years after Katrina, volunteers rebuild Bay St. Louis
From USAToday online
Volunteer groups such as Lutheran Episcopal Services play an essential role in the rebuilding process by filling in gaps created by insufficient state and federal funding, says Eugene Brezany, a spokesman with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Mississippi. More than 650,000 volunteers have helped rebuild the Mississippi coast since Katrina.
“The volunteers were here before the government really got in full swing and have remained in waves of activity since Day 1,” Brezany says.
Shortly after Katrina hit, Lutheran Episcopal Services in Mississippi changed its focus to rebuilding homes and recruiting volunteers from churches across the country, says the Rev. Elizabeth Wheatley-Jones, the group’s mission director.
A team of construction supervisors train and orchestrate the volunteers, who do everything from gut flood-wrecked homes to install drywall and sinks to repaint homes, she says. The volunteers range in age from 16 to older than 80. They come for one-week periods and stay in barracks at the group’s headquarters in a cavernous former hardware store just a few blocks from the shore. More than 55,000 volunteers have come through the program, Wheatley-Jones says.