Katrina’s Devastation and the Latter-day Saints

Katrina’s devastation may be the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. Over a million people have been displaced from their homes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama by savage winds and murky, rising floodwaters contaminated with sewage and bodies. Eighty-five percent of New Orleans is under water and rescue workers are marking X’s on houses that contain the dead.

Martial law has been declared in the city and all residents are being asked to leave. All the lanes on all the roads around New Orleans are one way—leading out. Coastal cities and towns in Mississippi and Alabama have been devastated by the tidal surge.

Yet for Latter-day Saints, Ole Christensen, President of the Denham Springs Stake and chairman of the regional welfare committee, gave the most graphic description, “It reminds me of the chaos in 3 Nephi.” That completes the picture. Utter catastrophe. The face of the world changed.

“I’m sure the people then were probably numb too,” said President Christensen. You really don’t have time to think about it because the phone never stops ringing.”

Most of us are experiencing Katrina’s wake through television images of desperate people who have become refugees with no place to go, huddled in the Superdome or climbing, drenched out of water, saying they have no food, no water and no one to tell them what to do.

Remarkable Welfare System Thanks to the remarkable welfare system of the Church, for Latter-day Saints the situation is very different.

Latter-day Saints knew immediately knew what to do. When the storm hit, Priesthood leaders began what is an ongoing assessment of the whereabouts and well-being of the members. The Church has announced that all missionaries were evacuated before the storm hit. There are no reported deaths or injuries of members although many have not been accounted for.

President Christensen said the Baton Rouge temple was undamaged, though it lost its power for a period of time. Of the 43 buildings in the five stakes of his region, most of buildings sustained little or slight damage, except for those buildings in the areas hardest hit—the New Orleans Stake and the Slidell Stake. Because communications has been nearly impossible with those regions, the fate of many of those buildings is still uncertain.

“My best guess” said President Christensen, “is that two of the buildings in the Slidell area have some water in them. We do not have reports out of some areas—even by satellite phone.

“The New Orleans Stake is a whole different story. We believe that the New Orleans stake center has water in it We have no idea what has happened to the chapel in Port Sulphur. The worst scenario is that it is now part of the Gulf of Mexico, but, of course, we just don’t know.

“We received a report that some members were stranded on the west bank of New Orleans and that President Scott Conlin has organized a caravan of vans to see if he can go pick them up.

As of Wednesday, approximately 10 meetinghouses throughout the disaster area were being used as emergency shelters for members and their neighbors. Many of these had two or three hundred people or more in them.

President Conlin had also developed a warning system and evacuation plan for the New Orleans stake which was put into place this past weekend. This stake has an automated phone system so that the stake president put in a prerecorded message on Saturday and again on Sunday morning that rang into 1700 homes. The message was to evacuate the city. If they weren’t leaving their homes, they were given an 800 number so they could report where they were going to me.

The evacuation plan called for people to go to three different stake centers—two in Mississippi and one in Lousiana that were near the three major arteries that lead out of the city. A member knew which one to go based on the highway that was closest to him.

Of course, there is no way to estimate at this point how many people have lost their homes. “These people are displaced,” said Joyce Christensen. They can’t go home. They have nothing to go home to. We’re still just processing what has happened.”

Bishop’s Storehouse Though Slidell was one of the hardest hit areas, the Bishop’s Storehouse, which is nearly new, only suffered a bit of water damage when water from the storm leaked through the waters and doors. The power grid was badly damaged and it may take as many as eight to twelve weeks to restore electricity.

At the storehouse, a generator was immediately put to work and commodities continued to roll out the door.

Kevin Nield, director of Bishops' Storehouse Services, said that to this point the Church had responded with 14 semi-trailers full of necessities like water, tents, sleeping bags, tarps, chainsaws, generators, canned food and hygiene kits. When the Church saw the storm danger, “simultaneously we sent supplies to be pre-positioned in those locations to be close to the needs.”

Needs are assessed by priesthood leaders with some guidance based on the experience of the welfare department. Every evening priesthood leaders have been on a conference call with officers in Salt Lake so that the Church can be appropriately responsive.to needs.

Bennie Lilly, Area Welfare Manager for the North American Southeast Area, talked to Meridian from the Slidell bishop’s storehouse. “It’s hot and humid here. People are tired. About 10,000 members live in this area who have been affected by Katrina.

“Where I am standing, I see a tree that has fallen through the roof of a house and just beyond that a church that has lost its roof. There is no water, but still Bishop David Navo of the Mississipi Picayune Ward is here getting commodities for his hard-struck members.”

Housed in a Church Bishop Navo had one central message when Brother Lilly handed the phone to him, “ I am so grateful for the Church. I am grateful that Salt Lake had supplies on the way before the hurricane even hit. When you are involved in a catastrophe of this magnitude, you get a whole new picture of the services of the Church.”

Bishop Navo’s ward members have no communications whatsoever. No cell phones. No pay phones. No electricity. Stores are closed, but Wal-Mart is letting a few people in at a time to buy items with cash.

Limbs, trees and branches are down everywhere and many of the roads are nearly impassable. Katrina’s eye passed over Picayune and so they were hit hard.

“Oak trees so big that you couldn’t put your arms around their trunk went down,” he said.

Bishop Navo cannot contact every ward member, so the night before the storm hit, he and his family moved into the Church to be there in case any members had to find shelter there. Come they did, by the scores. They pooled what food they had. The storm hit and the next day misery set in with soaring temperatures and no water and food.

Thus Bishop Navo came to the Slidell bishop’s storehouse for food, water and generators to supply the needs of those living in the church.

What especially pleased him, however, was that a woman who had adopted two special needs children received something she desperately needed. When the children got too hot, they had a tendency to go into seizures, and she needed a generator to keep them cool. Bishop Navo made sure she received the first generator from the Church’s supplies.

Of course, members will need more than commodities as the awful realization bears down day in and out of what they’ve lost. LDS Social Services is sending help into the area to support member’s emotional needs—almost a kind of grief counseling. People are reaching out to each other with open homes and open hearts.

And in the long run? How will Latter-day Saints rebuild lost homes and opportunities, swallowed under floodwaters or howling winds? That will take a longer assessment.

For New Orleans to be habitable again, they will have to start from the ground up with a completely new infrastructure—including roads and power. For Latter-day Saints who lived there, they can turn to a deeper infrastructure—a Church that is ready to help them when disaster strikes.

Here is some information about Utah churches donating and helping the victims.

Utah churches are going extra mile in relief efforts

Utah's faith communities are working with national religious and secular organizations to ship relief supplies, collect funding, organize feeding and cleanup teams and to pray for the tens of thousands of people devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

At the Bishop's Central Storehouse in Salt Lake City, warehouseman Charles Christensen loads supplies on a truck to be sent to states affected by Katrina.

Michael Brandy, Deseret Morning News

Meanwhile, LDS officials on the ground in the Southeast still hope to account for some of their missing members.

Fourteen semitrailer truck loads of ready-to-eat food, water, sleeping bags and tents have left Salt Lake City from the Bishop's Storehouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some of them as early as last Sunday. Additional containers were being loaded Wednesday afternoon for immediate shipment.

Kevin Nield, director of Bishops' Storehouse Services, told reporters that areas of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi appear to be hardest hit, and the supplies being shipped there are in addition to food, water and other items that were pre-positioned at the church's storehouses around the region

LDS Church spokesman Dale Bills said several LDS church buildings, including those in Alexandria, La., as well as Jackson and Hattiesburg, Miss., are being used as emergency shelters to house those displaced by the storms, and they will also serve as distribution points for LDS relief supplies.

LDS missionaries were evacuated from the areas hit by the storm last weekend, and all are accounted for, he said.

Bennie O. Lilly, area welfare manager for the LDS Church's North American Southeast Area, told the Deseret Morning News via satellite phone from the church's storehouse in Slidell, La., which is serving as the primary distribution point for relief supplies. He said that in southern Louisiana and Mississippi the devastation is so widespread that local church leaders have been unable to account for all of their members there.

From 5,000 to 10,000 Latter-day Saints live in the affected areas, and with communication systems down, accounting for everyone is difficult, he said.

Lilly said local church leaders are responding to the needs of their congregations as well as can be expected at this point, but many face major challenges in dealing with their personal losses and circumstances. For example, President Barry Griggs of the Gulfport, Miss., stake reported in his first contact with regional leaders that his home had been destroyed.

"He was headed in his car toward North Carolina to drop off his wife," who has some health problems and needed to be evacuated. "Then he'll turn around and come back to the devastation of his own situation, in addition to trying to meet the needs of members in that area. When your home is destroyed, there's just so much you can do."

Communications in the area at this point are tenuous at best, Lillie said, illustrated by the fact that his satellite phone lost contact five different times during a 10-minute conversation with the newspaper. Still, he is grateful to have the equipment, which has also been used by local police and fire agencies in the immediate area. With spotty phone communication, "we just have to capture the information coming and going as fast as we can before we lose the signal."

A bishop from the church's Picayune, Miss., area was at the storehouse with Lillie to pick up a load of relief supplies for the members of his congregation, but phone service was lost before he was able to relay information to the newspaper about conditions in his area.

Other faith groups are also involved in a variety of ways.

Wade Gaylor, disaster relief director for the Southern Baptist Utah-Idaho Convention, said his organization is coordinating with the national Southern Baptist Convention to help provide equipment and manpower. Two trucks have already been flown from Salt Lake City to Shreveport, La., one of them to be used by the Southern Baptist Convention's national relief director to assess damage and direct relief efforts.

A local couple has been dispatched with the other truck to work in the convention's disaster center in Alpharetta, Ga., for about a week to help coordinate disaster response.

Nationally, the Red Cross has asked Southern Baptists to help prepare 500,000 meals per day for the next 90 days, Gaylor said. "We have an agreement with the national Red Cross — they provide us with the food, we prepare it and they serve it. Southern Baptists actually cook about 90 percent of the food the Red Cross serves."

As part of that effort, local feeding teams of 15-20 people each will be dispatched in the next three weeks to work with the Red Cross. Gaylor said a few opt to take their own RVs, but most will simply drive to the area and work out of existing Southern Baptist churches.

Gaylor is also coordinating the deployment of feeding units and cleanup and recovery units — including portable showers, washers and dryers — that will be dispatched from Utah and Idaho in the next few weeks. Coordinators from the national convention are on the ground with satellite phones and communicating the needs with the national relief offices in Atlanta, which then requests help from the state conventions.

Local Baptist churches will also be making quilts to be sent out with the feeding and cleanup units when they leave Utah, he said. Donations are being requested to help fund the local relief efforts and can be made by calling Norma Fox at 801-572-5350. Checks may also be mailed to the Southern Baptist Utah-Idaho Convention, 12401 S. 450 East #G1, Draper, UT 84020, made out to that organization.

Local Baptist churches will also be praying for those who have been affected, Gaylor said. "Right now they just need a lot of prayer. People are seriously in chaos out there right now and need a lot of prayer."

Pastor Greg Johnson, director of a group of local evangelical churches called Standing Together, said many of them are calling on their members to donate money for relief through the Christian Emergency Network (CEN) — www.christianemergencynetwork.com — or the local Salvation Army. On Wednesday, he e-mailed members of the group, encouraging them to pray for the victims and their challenges and to take a special offering that would be channeled either through their own denominational channels or through CEN or the local Salvation Army.

As of Wednesday afternoon, First Church of the Nazarene and Valley Assembly of God were planning to seek donations and offer prayers. Standing Together will also be making a donation through CEN in the name of local Utah evangelical churches, Johnson said, and everyone interested is encouraged to participate with the World Prayer Team in praying for relief. See www.worldprayerteam.org.

The Rev. Dan Webster, spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of Utah, said donations are being solicited through the national Episcopal Relief and Development organization, and a link to that organization can be reached through the diocesan Web site at www.episcopal-ut.org.

"They've been preparing for several days to work with the outreach ministries of Episcopal dioceses along the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, and they're ready to move forward." He said Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold of the the Episcopal Church USA is forwarding a letter to be read in all parishes on Sunday talking about the relief effort and asking for help.

Planning is under way for a local diocesan response, which may include a call for prayer for those in the affected areas, and could include fund-raising. In other areas of the country, the Episcopal Foundation of Texas voted to send an emergency grant of $50,000 to both the Dioceses of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the Diocese of Texas hopes to raise $100,000 this Sunday from its 158 congregations.

Rabbi Tracee Rosen of Congregation Kol Ami said Utah's Jewish community will try to come up with some type of response in the coming days once assessment has been done and they are able to determine the most appropriate way to respond.

"We want to make sure our donations are channeled to give as much direct help as possible." No special prayer services are planned, but "we will be making special mention of the folks down there. A number of people in our congregation have relatives that have been affected."

Though calls to spokespersons for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City had yet to be returned at press time, the diocese is one of 195 throughout the country that will be asked to participate in a National Collection for Hurricane Relief, announced Wednesday by Bishop William S. Skylstad, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"Catholic Charities USA, working with the local diocesan Catholic Charities, has a professional and well-de- veloped system of reviewing the needs and providing help where it can accomplish the most good." Diocesan collections and individual donations can be sent to the 2005 Hurricane Relief Fund, Catholic Charities USA, P.O. Box 25168, Alexandria, VA 22313-9788.

LDS duo haul aid to victims

SLIDELL, La. — Benny Lillie and Rick Long of the LDS Church's Welfare Services Emergency Response team left Salt Lake City for the Gulf Coast on Monday; by Wednesday they were in the thick of Hurricane Katrina's swath of disaster, methodically visiting town after town to deliver goods — and offering help and hope.

Volunteers from Bay St. Louis Emergency Management Agency rescue a family from the roof of their suburban in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

Ben Sklar, Associated Press

Lillie and Long headed first to Dallas, Texas, where they loaded a pickup with supplies and followed a semi filled with cots, sleeping bags, generators, tarps and chain saws as it made its way east, stopping at shelters along the way.

One of their first stops was in Alexandria, La., to which about 200 people from New Orleans had been evacuated. Among them were Marbely Barahona with her 11-month-old son, Jared.

Jared rolled on the floor of the Alexandria LDS stake meetinghouse with his shirt off, entertaining refugees of all ages who had just eaten breakfast. Barahona said the stake president had asked them to evacuate before the storm. It was a notification system that Scott N. Conlin, president of the New Orleans Louisiana Stake, had automated earlier. His telephone message was sent by computer to each family in the stake, and all but about seven families elected to leave.

Marbely's neighbors who didn't leave were forced to the rooftops after a levee was sliced by wind-driven waters and Lake Pontchartrain waters flooded 80 percent of the low-lying New Orleans area with from 2 to 20 feet of water.

Area LDS Church officials said most meetinghouses escaped serious damage, but several in the New Orleans area are expected to have sustained serious damage. LDS missionaries were evacuated two days before the storm arrived.

Lillie and Long continued their trail of relief to Baton Rouge, where other residents of New Orleans had found refuge. Two of these were Jacob and Johanna Tolpi of Chalmette, a parish that took the brunt of the storm.

Owners of two well-kept sorrel-colored hounds, the Tolpis elected to face the storm rather than abandon their dogs. They waited in a nearby hotel, where the windows were soon blown out. The wind pounded away so fiercely that it changed the direction of the river's current, Jacob Tolpi said.

"Every tree was blown down, every window was broken," he said. As the wind howled, the hounds yelped and barked. "It was pretty scary," he said.

After the storm, they fled the city on a nearly empty tank of gas in their SUV, finding refuge in Baton Rouge.

Lillie and Long then stopped in Hammond, La., where the storm had damaged the homes of several LDS members and where the tarps they delivered were soon put to use over damaged roofs.

Their next stop was Slidell, northeast of New Orleans, which also faced hurricane winds of 140-160 miles per hour. A checkpoint on I-12 blocked traffic into Slidell, but officers allowed the relief supplies in.

Broken trees lay everywhere — tall, loblolly pine snapped half way up and stately, ancient live oak and pin oak, whose strength kept them intact, only to be betrayed by their shallow root systems. Snapped power poles lay shattered in the streets, connected by a spaghetti of cable. With all the power and telephones out, danger from the powerlines was minimal.

Lillie sent Long to Mississippi, where reports had been received of trees strewn across the countryside. Because of looters, the Mississippi Highway Patrol sealed the borders and it wasn't known if Long made it through.

Regardless, said Lillie, trucks from Orlando, Fla., and Atlanta, Ga., will be headed their way today with more supplies and equipment.

He said the truck from Dallas they followed unloaded at a storehouse in Slidell. Then, reloaded with commodities, it returned to each site.

Meanwhile, the disaster was reaching new crisis points in other areas.

Even as leaders of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish pleaded on the radio for supplies, begging for food for refugees, medical aid and help from law enforcement, I-10 at dusk was a miles-long caravan of yellow blinking lights as service vehicles from other states filled both lanes. Some carried heavy equipment, some tree equipment, some components of one kind or another.

They rumbled forward, people intent on helping however they could.

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