One Year Later, Resilience Fuels Gulf Coast Recovery

Posted: 29 August 2006

by Ashley Tsongas

Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina and part of the second wave of Oxfam staff to the region, I drove down to Biloxi, Miss., in an RV with two other colleagues. Two days of normal American scenery flashing by the window, and then, 100 miles from the coast, the trees began to lean back. From then on, it was like entering a whole other world.

The first week in Biloxi was a blur of heat, stench, frustration, sadness, and, above all, awe. Awe for the incredible power of a storm that could flatten blocks of homes, leaving nothing but a few concrete stairs, and move whole homes off their foundations, depositing them in the middle of the road. Awe for the incredible reliance of communities that, abandoned by FEMA, were rallying to organize their own distribution of water, food, and tents despite exhaustion and trauma.

Nowhere was that resilience more apparent than at the Sunday service outside the Main Street Baptist Church. After his church flooded up to the second floor, the pastor strung a tarp over the road, setting up a makeshift soup kitchen and, now, chapel. The chairs were filled by people who had lost not only their homes and all their belongings, but also family members and neighbors. Surrounded on all sides by debris and broken homes, the parishioners created a space under the tarp with song and prayer that pushed back against the stench and heat and created a haven of shared joy, pain, and community.

In the year that has passed, much has stayed the same. Despite promises to the contrary, the same communities are being left behind. Despite billions of funds pledged by federal government, people haven’t received the money they need to repair their homes. Amid disaster on an epic scale, poor communities throughout Louisiana and Mississippi have to rely on resilience and determination to rebuild their lives – familiar tools to folks down here.

At a town hall meeting in Gulfport, Mississippi, last Saturday night, in a room filled with frustration at the lack of progress, space was again created for hope and community, this time by the Rev. Martin Denesse of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Visiting from his devastated parish, the reverend led the room in a moment of silence for those who were lost a year before – and those who had passed on in the months since, brought down by sickness and depression. Then he inspired the crowd to cheers and claps by saying that despite the naysayers who have decided our coastal communities are not worth it, we say they are.

“The blessing in Katrina is that we need to love one another as we love ourselves,” he told the crowd, and pledged solidarity between his community and those in the room.

In that moment, community stretched outside the doors of the hall, past the boundaries of this Mississippi town, and united people all along the Gulf Coast who are confronting a second storm of government neglect and are still not bowed. As it was a year ago, it was an honor to be present in such a room and work alongside such people.