Emergency Response director visits Louisiana, assesses needs.

Roy Winter, director of Emergency Response for the Church of the Brethren General Board, traveled to southern Louisiana Sept. 8-11, visiting a sample of some 290 shelters from east to west across the state and helping the Red Cross assess needs for mental health care and counseling and the need for Disaster Child Care.

The assessment was made with a team from the Harvard School of Public Health. The team made a "field assessment" of the mental health status of survivors, Winter said, and tried to sample as many emergency centers as they could. They traveled from as far east as the town of Slidell, to as far west as Jennings in Louisiana. The team's findings have been reported to the Red Cross and may be published as well, in order to help other groups doing follow-up work, Winter said.

The Red Cross has "a huge task," and has been doing good work, trying to meet an incredible amount of needs, Winter said. He cited the agency's ability to serve millions of meals each day to survivors, for example. As of Sept. 9, the Red Cross reported that over 40,000 staff have worked on the response to Hurricane Katrina, in the Gulf Coast area and southern Florida. The Red Cross has in addition recruited some 9,000 volunteers to help with the effort. A total of 676 Red Cross shelters or evacuation centers have been set up, housing a shelter population of 161,245. And 5,955,846 meals have been served, not counting another 5,902,433 snacks.

But the task is so large "that things can't happen as fast as survivors would like, and that's frustrating," Winter added. "Evacuees are longing for more information about how to get back on their feet. They just want to be able to get their lives back together."

Some evacuees already have their children in school and have gotten new jobs while they live in shelters, he said. Those families may well have to move again, however, once shelters close or other housing opportunities open up. Other evacuees have nothing left but their dignity, he said.

He reported that the shelters supported by churches as well as the Red Cross are doing better at meeting needs than those with support just from the Red Cross. For example, he visited one shelter housed in a church building, where the congregation had given up Sunday school rooms--and the option of holding Sunday school--in order to serve survivors. At that church, some 70 percent of those sheltering in the building are attending worship there as well, he said. There are churches that have set up shelters without the help of the Red Cross, Winter added, and the Red Cross is beginning to assist them as it can, but that assistance may be slow.

The team Winter was with saw a range of destruction from the hurricane, from some damage in Slidell, to the flooding of the levees in New Orleans, to Baton Rouge, where just a few tree limbs were downed and only a little clean up was needed. They visited a range of types of shelters and emergency centers, including a shelter for convicts evacuated from prisons in New Orleans.

Winter also went to Roanoke (La.) Church of the Brethren and visited with pastor James Balmer. The congregation is actively helping shelters in its area.

Source: 9/14/2005 Newsline
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