Coalition vows help for Katrina evacuees

Yawu Miller

Like most other Katrina evacuees, Patrick Wooten didn’t know where his family was headed when they boarded a plane.

“I asked the people where we were going,” he recalls. “They said ‘sit down.’ So we sat down.”

After living through the devastation of the hurricane and the aftermath, including Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco’s orders for police to “shoot to kill” looters — which often meant hungry New Orleans residents in search of food — the Wooten family was happy just to be leaving.

Their journey took them to Cape Cod’s Otis Air Force Base where they joined 243 other New Orleans evacuees awaiting placement in local communities.

Helping to ease the shock of displacement was a coalition of churches, government officials and human service providers who have been working together to pair the victims with faith-based communities across the state where they have resettled.

The coalition meets every Wednesday to help coordinate efforts to attend to the needs of the evacuees, many of whom are opting to re-settle in Massachusetts.

“We’re working on putting the people as quickly as we can back to some sense of normalcy,” Sen. Dianne Wilkerson said. “There has been an extraordinary amount of work done. We have an extraordinary amount of work to do.”

While the Federal Emergency Management Administration has set a December 1 deadline for cutting off aid to evacuees living in motels, the clergy and state officials working in Massachusetts say they will provide for the 800 families throughout the state until they have placement in permanent housing.

The lead agency in the effort is Roxbury Children’s Services, which has worked with families on the Air Force base and other evacuees who self-located to Massachusetts.

Each family has been assigned to a case manager who helps connect them with necessary services. Executive Director Richard Richardson said the organization’s work is far from over.

“FEMA may say it’s over, but we’re in it for the long haul,” he said. “We are committed to doing the job the state has asked us to do.”

While Children’s Services of Roxbury attends to the material needs of the families, the Massachusetts Faith Helps Coalition — which includes churches from across the state, has been attending to the families’ spiritual needs, helping to integrate the evacuee families into their communities.

Pastor Neil Eaton of the Hope Chapel in Plymouth enlisted members of his church to help meet the Wootens’ transition into the Southeastern Massachusetts community, helping the family with winter clothes and other necessities and welcoming them into their worship services.

“Our church has been as blessed to give as the Wootens have been to receive,” Eaton said.