Blacksburg volunteers return to Mississippi

The group from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation helped coastal residents rebuild.

By Jared Turner: The Roanoke Times March 17, 2007

Since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, Rick Kraft has made three trips to Mississippi to aid reconstruction efforts in areas affected by the storm. The past two times, he's taken a company of helpers.

Kraft was joined most recently by a team of 14 fellow parishioners of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Blacksburg. They returned to the New River Valley on March 3 following a five-day stay in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

Located on the bay that empties into the Mississippi Sound, the city was immersed by a storm tide more than 30-feet deep in the days after Katrina made landfall.

"After the storm everything was gone," said UUC volunteer Pat Traynor, who returned to Mississippi this month after making her first trip to the Gulf Coast with Kraft and others last summer. "There was nothing."

The group stayed in the bunker house of a Baptist Church in Bay St. Louis where five volunteers did trim work and painting on a house -- now perched on stilts 10 feet off the ground -- once flooded by four feet of water.

Most of the volunteers from the UUC installed roof framing for another house in nearby Waveland, Miss., where a neighborhood of about 700 homes was destroyed by the storm.

"Where there used to be houses there was nothing there," said Kraft, who owns Kraft Construction Co. in Blacksburg. "There's a handful of houses that are going up now, maybe 10 or 20 out of that 700. And this is a year and a half later. ... There's a huge need."

Made aware of that need from his previous trips to the once ravaged Gulf Coast city of Ocean Springs, Miss., Kraft arrived a day early at Bay St. Louis to survey potential job sites for the others. The team, which included two professional contractors and three others with considerable construction experience, came equipped with a trailer full of power tools and easy grips to enhance the reconstruction process.

Just seeing the remaining devastation for the residents might have been the hardest part.

"If they're lucky they can live in a FEMA trailer on their site," Kraft said. "If they're not-so-lucky they live in a FEMA trailer park. If they're less lucky, they're moved away."

Volunteers said they were moved by the stories they heard from residents of Bay St. Louis and surrounding areas. Many of those who lost homes in Katrina had no flood insurance. Some of the same flood victims continue to experience mental health issues in the aftermath.

Kraft remembers a conversation during one of his trips with a woman who said she still cries when driving down a particular street dismembered by Katrina. Another time, a homeowner in Bay St. Louis told Kraft about a recent murder-suicide in the city that involved a prominent, church-going family.

"You hear a lot of sad stories," he said. "Our job is to help rebuild their houses, but it's also to just listen. These people need to tell their story. They might need to tell it a thousand times, but that's part of their healing process."

Traynor hopes her work in the region isn't done.

"It's like a grain of sand on the beach," she said. "It's what we can do but it's miniscule."

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