The buzz of chainsaws will again fill the air this weekend as thousands of volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints descend on the Gulf Coast to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Setting aside their weekday routines as bankers, accountants, contractors, attorneys, managers, dentists, retirees, students and salesmen, volunteers are on their way to Louisiana and Mississippi in carpools and buses, bringing with them tents, sleeping bags, food, water, clothing, chainsaws, ladders and even backhoes.
These volunteers, dubbed the “chainsaw warriors,” are expected to drive late into the night from their homes in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas.
By Saturday morning tent cities will again surround Latter-day Saint chapels in Collins, Columbia, Covington, Gulfport, Hattiesburg, LaPlace, Laurel, Meridian, Pascagoula, Picayune, Slidell and Waveland.
In the days immediately preceding the mobilization, Church leaders from the volunteers’ home congregations divided them into crews and gave them instruction, while those at the points of destination identified community residents in greatest need and drafted work orders in preparation for an early start the next day.
The volunteers will work through the daylight hours on Saturday and to midday on Sunday, cutting and clearing debris from fallen trees and covering damaged roofs with tarps to prevent water damage as residents await insurance settlements and repairs.
Last weekend volunteers cleared literally thousands of yards in a mission of mercy. As of Monday evening, a tally of the Church’s combined volunteer efforts in hurricane-stricken areas included 9,204 man-days and 4,832 work orders, providing assistance to over 4,800 people.
“I don’t think that we’ve ever had that kind of effort in a sustained way,” said Elder D. Todd Christofferson (a member of the Presidency of the Seventy, one of the bodies that provide leadership to the worldwide Church from its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah). The ongoing relief effort to which he referred began as soon as the receding storm allowed trucks loaded with relief supplies to enter the stricken areas. “And it’s not the end,” he promised.
Over the next two weekends, Latter-day Saint congregations in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas have committed an additional 4,000 weekend workers to the ongoing cleanup and relief effort, which will extend to some areas hardest hit by Katrina that are only gradually becoming accessible to volunteer work crews. Another 1,800 will follow over three weekends in October.
Behind the numbers lie the individuals. Tales of struggle and survival emerged as the visitors and local residents worked side by side in the cleanup effort:
• Chelsey (age 7 and an
energetic helper with the debris removal) and James Barron (10) of
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, spoke animatedly of their experience in
the
hurricane, with its loud wind, “limbs flying around,” the crash of
the wall that surrounded their property that “sounded like
dynamite,” and the “scary” time
when a tree – one of several that was to litter their property –
fell onto their home.
• A Hattiesburg mother,
whose battle with multiple sclerosis makes her particularly
susceptible to the loss of power in the oppressive late-summer
heat, has
chosen to stay with her family and help with the cleanup, which
seemed an insurmountable task after the magnitude of the work led
to the demise of both of
the family’s chainsaws.
• An observer of a crew’s
labors in Petal, Mississippi, asked if they would be able to clear
the debris from the yard of that town’s police chief, who had
been
too busy helping others in the storm’s aftermath to clean up his
own property; that became their next stop.
• A grandmother raising her
three grandchildren in a beautifully kept mobile home outside of
Toomsuba, Mississippi, found her life disrupted when a falling
tree
tore a floor-to-roof gash in its back wall, rendering it
uninhabitable for the children – until the “Mormon Helping Hands”
crew, working well past sunset,
provided the necessary stopgap repair that allowed the children to
return.
At the same time that their chain saws were taking apart fallen trees, the Latter-day Saint volunteers forged bonds with people of other faiths.”
• A Baptist family in
Mississippi, surprised at the offer of help from a Latter-day Saint
work crew, named the mountain of debris that they and their
newfound
friends from Georgia jointly hauled to their curbside their
“Mormon pile.”
• In Louisiana, after
losing two trucks, a fully stocked freezer and more in the flooding
that accompanied the hurricane and forced her family’s
evacuation,
Slidell Harts United Methodist Church member Mildred Eden found
her attempt to return to her home thwarted by a jumble of fallen
trees and wires spread
across her yard and driveway. “You are the best thing that has
happened to me since the hurricane,” she said. “I’m a volunteer, so
when we get back in our
home and you need help, I’ll help you.”
That spirit of reciprocity played out repeatedly, with people of other denominations contributing spontaneously to the effort.
• As one crew was cutting
and clearing debris from a home in Picayune, Mississippi, a
neighbor pulled up with his four-wheel drive and front-end
loader.
After moving the accumulating debris to the curbside with his
loader, he exclaimed, “You go back and tell your group that Mr.
Seal from the Pine Grove
Baptist Church helped you.”
• A United Methodist
congregation in Slidell, Louisiana, allowed volunteers descending
on that community from Houston, Texas, to sleep in their
church.
When the local congregants arrived at their church on Sunday, they
found the debris cleared from their churchyard and their
hurricane-damaged flag
mounted as a keepsake while a bright new banner flew from the
flagpole. In a shared worship service, the pastor voiced a feeling
of unity shared by
those of both denominations: “The Mormons are now our
friends.”
“When I hear these stories, I am humbled by the tremendous service that is being rendered between people of all faiths,” said Elder John S. Anderson, director of the Church’s Emergency Operations Center in Slidell, which coordinates the relief effort throughout the Southeast. “We are all children of God, and that’s what matters.”
As volunteer workers and
those they were assisting bade farewell, a common realization
emerged that all parties involved were beneficiaries. A crew
leaving the home of an elderly couple in Meridian, Mississippi,
after removing the debris from several large trees that had fallen
in their yard, reported hearing their last tearful “thank-yous” as
they pulled away. “Before last weekend, most of us had experienced
the satisfaction of contributing money to relief agencies,” said B.
Jeffrey Strebar, bishop of the Whitewater congregation near
Atlanta, Georgia. “But the pure joy of looking into the tear-filled
eyes of those whose lives have been so overwhelmingly altered was
an experience that will never be forgotten.”