Disaster Relief
Volunteer Info
Click Here for information about volunteering and how St. Paul's can help.Currently and probably for the next three to five years the Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR) Team and VOLUNTEERS will be working hard to aid individuals and families to recover from Hurricane Katrina.
Our church is currently hosting VOLUNTEER groups (not only our Lutheran denomination but also other religious denominations) from all over the country ( housing and feeding) so that we can facilitate disaster repairs and rebuilding in the local area.
Our mission as Christians is so simple and so clear. Jesus gave us the commandment to "love one another as I have loved you". How better to repay His sacrifice for our eternal lives than to accept, with a grateful heart, the task of caring for God's people.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, while crashing ashore, was, at the same time, sounding a call for us to respond to Jesus command. While no one knew in advance what the extent of the devastation would be, it was soon very clear that the magnitude was almost beyond imagination.
In South Mobile County , as was the case everywhere, the impact was personal for more than 1000 families. While the scope was dwarfed by the effects in Mississippi and Louisiana , and the national news coverage largely ignored Alabama , families in South Mobile County returned to homes and property damaged and destroyed on a scale never before experienced. A storm surge of 16 feet swept out of Mississippi Sound and Mobile Bay and flooded an area two miles deep by 10 miles long. Lives would be changed forever.
The thriving seafood industry, including fishing, processing and shipbuilding was decimated. Of nineteen operating companies, all were either badly damaged or totally destroyed. Instantly, more than 2000 residents were unemployed. One year later only eight of those companies have reopened.
When Pastor Kazanjian of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Mobile toured Bayou LaBatre, Alabama three weeks after the storm, he knew that God was sending a message that could not be ignored. "This is the place and this is the time", Pastor thought as he stopped at house after house and drove past mountains of debris. Tents were everywhere. People were hauling debris, by hand, out of homes that had provided safety, shelter and love, but were now caverns of damp, molding rubble.
Days later Pastor met Mark Johnston. As director of the Virgin Islands Lutheran Services Agency, Mark had been sent to "help where he could". Pastor brought him to Bayou LaBatre and Mark Johnston knew how to help. In just weeks, Lutheran Disaster Response was organizing and coordinating both short term relief and long term recovery efforts. Within two months, working with and through Volunteer Mobile, St. Paul 's Church, the County VOAD and other South Mobile churches of all denominations, the LDR operations in the Bayou became a model for other recovery agencies to follow.
Working with Mennonites, Baptists, Presbyterians, Nazarenes and anyone else who was willing, LDR had, by December, identified and registered nearly 500 client families and cut across every religious and ethnic line. Caucasian, African-American, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Cuban, and Thai: they all came through the doors of the LDR office for the same reason: they needed help. God had sent them, through His love, to an organization that will, for years to come, be showing local communities and the world, what Jesus' command requires of a Christian.
Some Statistics about Hurricane Katrina and Lutheran Disaster Response
* The area affected by Katrina is about the size of Great Britain (90,000 square miles).
* The storm surge from Katrina was as much as 40 feet in some areas.
* About 50% of the local fishing fleet and 75% of the industry's infrastructure were destroyed by Katrina.
* Bayou la Batre, Alabama, was 95% flooded; 70% of its housing was destroyed.
* Many of the homes LDR has worked on are owned by the elderly, the poor, and the handicapped; those least likely to be able to rebuild their homes by themselves.
* As of January 2007:
There are about 60,000 people who cannot return to the Gulf Coast because they have no place to live.
22,918 volunteers from across the ELCA traveled to the Gulf Coast to assist in recovery work and stayed in Lutheran volunteer camp sites. Their work totaled nearly 1.1 million volunteer hours, equaling $17.3 million worth of in-kind service.
Through LDR 6,458 homes were gutted and repaired, and 850 homes have been rebuilt from ground up.
More than 8,000 families have received case-management services through LDR's network.