LOUISIANA: Southwestern deanery's damage translates into huge need
Episcopal News Service. September 5, 2008 [090508-03]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana Bishop Charles Jenkins found miles and miles of downed power lines, flooded roads and broken bridges as he and others spent much of September 5 touring parts of the diocese south and west of New Orleans.
Hurricane Gustav's winds damaged the bell tower of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Houma and caused some other minor problems to the building, Jenkins said, "but by and large is not as bad as we expected."
It's estimated that 625,000 people are without power in the state -- many of them in the areas the group visited September 5. "You go for miles and miles seeing miles and miles of downed power lines," he said.
Some people will not have power for up to six weeks, Jenkins said.
"That means no school," among other implications, he said. Episcopal Church-affiliated schools in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Covington have agreed to take in any students who show up, regardless of whether they have records or a tuition contract, according to Jenkins. The schools offered similar help in the months after Hurricane Katrina.
Vehicles were lined up for three miles waiting to pick up food, ice and water from the Houma Civic Center, the bishop reported.
The group also saw many government agency vehicles trucking in relief supplies and a large number of utility crews working to rebuilding the power grid.
The group was unable to check on St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in the Bayou du Large area. The DuLarge bridge on state route 315 was broken, Jenkins said.
"I used to fish all over that area and you couldn't get in there today without a boat," he added.
New Orleans and Baton Rouge Episcopal churches have been helping evacuees as they return to the cities, the bishop said.
Grace Church on Canal Street in New Orleans is serving as a relief supplies distribution center. Because it has power, parishioners and others are cooking meals that are being trucked to the Lower Ninth Ward and other places where people cannot cook. Episcopalians from elsewhere who want to help can send supplies and gift cards to the church, Jenkins said. The address is 3700 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70119.
St. Anna's mobile clinic, which began after Katrina, will travel September 6 to St. Patrick's Episcopal Church in Zachary, near East Baton Rouge. St. Patrick's fed roast venison, rice and gravy, black-eyed peas and cake to more than 500 people on September 5, according to the diocesan website.
Church of the Annunciation, New Orleans, has opened its campus to a large Southern Baptist group that, in cooperation with the Salvation Army, is serving meals and providing relief services.
The diocesan website has more information about the expanding relief effort.
Meanwhile, Jenkins said he and the other people ministering to Louisianans are feeling "an extra degree of anxiety we did not have after [Hurricane] Katrina."
After Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in late August 2005, many Louisiana clergy and laity were in the same tough straits as the people they were trying to assist. There was a certain freedom in having very little left, Jenkins said. It gave them the ability to devote much time and effort to relief work. Gustav did not wreak the same kind of havoc and thus he, the diocese's clergy and others are finding their attention is divided, Jenkins said, between their ministry and the work they need to do to put their own homes in order.
The lack of power, potable water and other services may be teaching people some larger lessons, the bishop said.
"A lot of people who have means are experiencing what the poor have always faced," he said.
Jenkins said he hoped that the "spiritual benefit" of that experience will be that "a sense of generosity and a sense of patience and the dignity of every human being will grow stronger."