Alumni, students, staff travel down South to help hurricane Victims

Heather Lowhorn

When Hurricane Katrina tore into Louisiana and Mississippi, leveling entire towns and flooding New Orleans, residents, including many who had lived through Camille, were stunned. As the survivors began to bury their dead and rebuild their lives, people from all over America reached out to help. As was the case all over the country, each person did what they could do — from donating to relief funds to volunteering for difficult and dangerous on-site relief efforts. This is a collection of stories of AU students and alumni offering up what they could do to help their fellow countrymen in their time of distress.

“I don’t want to be a pioneer,” says Dr. Susan Robinson Howell BA ’69. Yet a pioneer is what she will essentially be when she resumes her life in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. The city she and her family have called home for 30 years will be a harsher and dramatically changed place. “I’m going back to I don’t know what.” But the University of New Orleans where Howell is a professor of political science plans to reopen for the spring semester starting in January, and she has decided to return.

Before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, Howell and her husband evacuated their home in New Orleans and headed across Lake Pontchartrain to stay with a friend. But as the levees began to fail, it became clear they hadn’t gone far enough, and Howell began a new lifestyle as a refugee. They moved seven times, staying in Alabama, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., Indiana, and finally landing in Ohio.

In Ohio, Howell and other evacuees in the area have bonded together. “My friends up here … get together, and we just talk through things. Everybody has had lots of bad days, and we all can identify with each other because we know what it means. And it’s hard for other people to understand.”

At one point Howell was able to briefly return to her home in New Orleans to save whatever belongings she could, but there was very little left to save. “We lost the house, the contents—photo albums, clothes, everything,” she said. “We took one trip back to rescue some things from the second floor, but it was very hard to be in the house because it smelled so bad, the water was sewage. … We had to wear masks, gloves, and boots to go into the house.”

Out of all the loss and hardship, however, Howell retains an amazingly positive and down-to-earth outlook. She can see the positive in such a horrible situation. One such positive is her living situation. Because of severe housing shortages, many people are living with two, three, or more families in one house. “Luckily, I have my mother-in-law to move in with. I’m really blessed in that way.” Her 87-year-old mother-in-law lives in a suburb of New Orleans, and Howell and her husband are looking forward to the opportunity of helping her as she ages.

When Howell returns to her home, she will be starting over. “It’s hard for me to conceive of what it will be like going back,” says Howell. “All the places I did business, they’re all gone. You have to really build a new life. And it will be a simpler life. I never want a big house again. I never want a lot of material possessions again. I’ve discovered I don’t need that. I’m not the only one; there are plenty of people coming to the same conclusion.”

When the city of Long Beach, Miss., was devastated by Hurricane Katrina and her 30-foot storm surge, the city leaders reached out to the state of Florida for help. Ernie Peterson BA ’73, an appraiser for the Volusia County Property Appraisers Office, was quick to volunteer. “My office … had quite a bit of experience from last year when we had [hurricanes] Charlie, Francis, and Gordon,” says Peterson. “Each time we would go out and look at the damage to our county, and we’d developed some pretty good procedures on how to do this damage assessment so they asked if we could go out.”

Because Long Beach was so damaged, Peterson and the team of appraisers he we went with brought all of their own equipment. “We brought our own computers, our own printers — everything — and we set up in the fire station because the city hall for Long Beach was totally destroyed. There was nothing left.” The appraisers stayed in a large tent that had been set up in the parking lot of the fire station. “There were about 50 people in the tent, men and women. You just slept in a cot right next to whoever it was next to you. It looked like a circus tent.”

Peterson and his fellow appraisers set out each day with property records. They would find the property, take a digital image of the house, and estimate the amount of damage done. That information was then entered into an electronic data base. The city of Long Beach could then use that information to secure FEMA funds for the town’s infrastructure and for uninsured homeowners.

Just finding the properties, however, in a town left with few landmarks proved to be a difficult task. “The street signs were gone. … The first quarter mile [from the beach] there was nothing left, just the foundations. The only thing left were the stair steps going up to where the house used to be.” Peterson worked for seven days in the stifling heat with sickening smells and heartbreaking situations. Despite the almost incomprehensible destruction, Peterson found the people of Long Beach resilient. “They were very up-beat for what they went through and are probably still going through today. … They were tired. It was still hot then, so it was miserable. All the sewer lines were broken. It wasn’t very pleasant,” says Peterson.

After seeing the destruction that Hurricane Katrina had dealt to the Gulf Coast, a group of 31 AU students and four faculty and staff members wanted to help in some way, but at first they weren’t sure how. After making several calls, Stuart Erny, director of Campus Ministries, was put in contact with Tom Schuurman BA '99 the pastor of Pleasant Ridge Church of God in Hammond, La., who assured him there was plenty of work for AU’s volunteers to do. So the group headed south for fall break.

“We departed campus about four in the afternoon on Thursday, Oct. 13, and drove through the night,” says Erny. “We took a charter bus, and we all just sort of found a spot, whether in the aisle or in our seats and got as much sleep as possible. We arrived in Hammond the next day, Friday morning, and we really wanted to get in three good solid days of work then drive back through the night on Sunday.”

The volunteers worked in Hammond and Covington, La. Those areas had escaped the storm surge and flooding that destroyed towns closer to the coast, but had sustained much wind damage. “Largely the kind of work we did was tree clean up,” says Erny. “We would come into somebody’s yard and you couldn’t really see the house or the yard, but you put 35 people with 10 chainsaws on one thing and within four or five hours it was a new place. It was a satisfying feeling because it was one of those jobs where you could see a dramatic difference within a few hours,” says Erny.

During the trip, the volunteers from AU stayed in the homes of church members. “Southern hospitality does exist,” says Erny. “We were treated so well. They were so hospitable. They fed us amazing Cajun food.” While food and housing were provided, the volunteers brought their own tools, including chainsaws, because of the difficulty obtaining such items after the storm. “They hardly had access to those kinds of things, just because they were in such high demand.”

For Erny, the highpoint of the trip was the Sunday morning worship service. “They had a time where they asked anyone if they wanted to share, and a lot of people shared,” says Erny. “I knew they were appreciative [for the help], but I think I was surprised at the emotion. When you are down and out, it means so much for people who have stopped what they are doing to come and be where you are and help however they can.”

Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast on a Monday. By Friday, Dr. Scott Green BA '83 found himself riding along with police officers in a New Orleans that resembled a war zone.

When it became clear that the New Orleans police department needed assistance maintaining order in the wake of Katrina, the National Sheriff’s Association put out the call for officers to help. The Madison County, Ind., Sheriff’s department quickly sent a team of 19 officers. Green, a family physician in Anderson who also oversees some of the healthcare at the county jail, was asked to come and assist in any medical needs the officers or citizens might have.

“We stayed in Jefferson Parish, actually on a casino boat that they had converted to house officers,” says Green. “Once we got there, we found that the greatest need was in downtown New Orleans with the New Orleans police department. Somewhere between 200-300 [officers] had abandoned their post, and so they were in desperate need of some help. There was chaos downtown — looters and drug dealers and other folks who were shooting at police and looting stores and homes and those sorts of things.”

While some New Orleans policemen were AWOL, Green spoke highly of the officers who were on the job. “The officers who were there were working their tails off. They were working hard.” Many of the officers themselves had lost homes and loved ones. Green worked with a sheriff’s department officer whose parents had been caught in the flood. “His mom and dad climbed up into the attic and were able to cut through the roof. His mom died in his dad’s lap on the roof,” says Green.

Another officer took Green to a bridge overlooking the badly flooded Ninth Ward. “Most of the people were poor,” says Green. “The officer said, ‘This is my neighborhood that I patrol.’” The officer told Green of a single mother with four kids who faced a horrible decision when the levy broke. “The water rose so fast that she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t carry them all. The only thing she could think to do was pick up two and run. Just a devastating thing.”

Even though Green was in the middle of an extremely volatile situation, he says he wasn’t fearful or anxious. “I had a lot of people back here who were praying for me and for us and primarily for our safety.… There was a profound sense of God’s peace.”