Katrina victims to get new homes from local group
For several days after Hurricane Katrina, Rose Luciano didn't know whether her teenage daughter was safe.
Even when they were reunited, the mother and daughter had no place to live. The storm had destroyed the house they rented in Bay St. Louis, Miss., a town on the Gulf Coast near the Louisiana border.
Two years later, and thanks to a massive relief effort based in Wayland, Luciano, 37, and her 15-year-old daughter Shelby are planning to move into a home of their own in Waveland, Miss., a small city adjacent to Bay St. Louis that was almost demolished by Katrina. Luciano will have to buy the land and pay for flood insurance, but the house will come compliments of 408 workers and at least 175 volunteers from Wayland to Waveland, or W2W, an organization of volunteers and construction companies that formed soon after the August 2005 hurricane to help Waveland, which was hard-hit by Katrina. The storm's most violent component, the eye wall, covered the coastal city that was then home to about 10,000.
Beginning on Oct. 16, the W2W force, including construction workers, carpenters, painters, and plumbers, will go to Waveland and work for 16 weeks on eight homes for families displaced by Katrina, including Luciano and her daughter. Workers will spend a week at a time in Waveland, putting in 70-hour weeks but being paid $25 an hour for only 40 hours, which helps lower the project cost from almost $2.3 million to about $1.6 million. The group is hoping to raise the money through donations, and has collected about $435,000 so far.
"It's been two years. It's amazing this country hasn't rallied support around what I've deemed a third-world country down there," said Ken Vona, president of Kenneth Vona Construction in Waltham and the leader of the eight construction companies coordinating the project.
" 'Thank you' just doesn't quite say it," said Waveland Mayor Tommy Longo during a visit to Wayland last week. "When they said they were in it for the long haul, I'm here to tell you, they really meant it."
Longo spent a day in Wayland, starting with a visit to a high school civics class and ending at the town's public safety building, where he spoke with firefighters and police officers about his community's struggle to run a Fire Department out of trailers and with donated trucks.
Katrina destroyed 95 percent of Waveland's homes, Longo said. About 60 percent of Waveland residents - 6,000 people - have returned to the city, but 600 families still live in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Longo, who lives with his family in a trailer, said his unit, at 12-by-27 feet, is the same size as a typical FEMA trailer, but sturdier. There are nine people living there: Longo, his wife, their five children, and the two foster children they took in this summer.
The Waveland native, whose father was also a mayor of the city, said the W2W project tells his city's residents that they haven't been forgotten.
"The sheer basics that parents feel they need to provide to their children - the shelter - they can't do. So this means so much," Longo said.
Luciano began to cry during a recent phone conversation as she described her gratitude after she found out she had qualified for a home.
The single mother was a 911 dispatch supervisor for the Hancock County, Miss., sheriff's department, and was at work when the hurricane hit. But with the department's building destroyed, electricity and radio signal cut off, and roads impassable, "there wasn't much we could do for ourselves, let alone anyone else," she said.
"There was a friend of mine that was determined to come and find me. So she did. She parked her car about 2 miles away and walked to the sheriff's department," Luciano recalled. "So we went and actually found my daughter. It was truly horrible."
Her daughter had spent those few days with an aunt at a church shelter about 40 miles north of Hancock County.
Luciano, who is studying to be a paralegal and working as a server at a country club, applied for her new home through Lagniappe, a Presbyterian church group in Bay St. Louis that has worked with W2W to choose the families who will receive the eight new homes. Lagniappe social workers determined needs and assessed whether candidates would be able to pay insurance and mortgage payments on the land, said Kathie Steinberg, a W2W steering committee member.
As a healthy 37-year-old, Luciano said, she was shocked when she was approved. "I was simply just in awe. I truly couldn't believe it. I laughed and said to the one lady, 'Can you just pinch me?' "
This building project is the latest part of an ongoing commitment from W2W, one that has brought volunteers, including high school students and police officers, to Waveland on 10 occasions during the past two years.
In the first six months after Katrina, the group filled a 53-foot truck with household supplies to outfit FEMA trailers in Waveland. During the 2005 holiday season, Wayland families wrote cards and gave gifts to Waveland families. Last October, a group rebuilt two damaged homes and constructed a new one.
Progress on rebuilding the community is slow, but there is some, Longo said. The city's property tax base is down 80 percent from what it was before the storm, but because "everybody has to buy everything," sales tax revenue has returned to pre-Katrina levels, he said. The high school and middle school are in new buildings, the construction of which had started before the storm.
"Until you've walked down those streets and seen those kids playing in knee-high mud," the devastation is difficult to comprehend, said Wayland resident Steve Correia.
"I don't think I'm exaggerating to say it's a life-altering experience to go down and help," said Pam Lesser, another member of the W2W steering committee.
Send donations to Wayland to Waveland Hurricane Relief Fund, Town of Wayland, 41 Cochituate Road, Wayland, MA 01778, or visit waylandtowaveland.org to learn about traveling to Waveland as part of the upcoming project.
