Altruistic forces in New Milford are continuing their attempt to provide meaningful assistance to those persons and communities devastated by the Gulf Coast hurricanes, while the picture of devastation and despair painted in the stricken region continues to be depressing.
"I was in two houses this morning, There's no floor. There's no walls. The ceilings are still there," said Donna Gainey, city clerk of the small fishing village of Bayou LaBatre, Ala., late last week. Speaking from an administrative structure that, somehow, survived the 14-foot tidal surge that swept over the hurricane-vulnerable city, Ms. Gainey, who moved five miles inland after Hurricane Camille struck in 1969, described a landscape still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which came ashore Aug. 29.
"You wouldn't know it because of the traffic," she said at one point, as she interrupted her description of families living in eight-foot-wide trailers sited either on their front lawns or on land leased by FEMA to remark that damage to the residents' cars had also been a real loss. In many cases, those living in the trailers are unable to rebuild because they had wind, but not flood, insurance.
Immediately after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, the New Milford Town Council authorized the contribution of $30,000 in municipal funds to the American Red Cross as hurricane relief. That effort died, because, the council learned, because such donations by a municipality are not allowed.
Instead, the town chose to participate in a sister-city program, in which individuals and organizations help a hurricane-ravaged municipality. Bayou LaBatre, which gained some degree of fame as a location for the film "Forest Gump," was the village the town adopted.
"I got the number from the mayor's office and I told her I was going to call [the mayor in Bayou LaBatre] and I did, and I got a librarian," said Town Councilman Frank Wargo, who learned that the town library was ravaged by the storm. The residents who traveled north to escape the storm returned to Bayou LaBatre to find the library flooded with eight feet of water, with its furniture hanging from the ceiling.
As a result, Mr. Wargo said, the director of the New Milford Public Library, Carl DeMilia, is setting some books aside. "We're collecting some stuff right now," Mr. Wargo said.
Although the town's Director of Finance, Ray Jankowski, said New Milford had received no cash donations to assist its sister city, scattered efforts of other kinds on behalf of the hurricane victims have been underway.
"We just counted them up this morning," said New Milford Attorney Philip Spillane Saturday. As the parent of troop member Kevin Spillane, he coordinated a clothing drive for Boy Scout Troop 58. He said Kimberly-Clark's New Milford facility had donated some big tissue cases. "We filled up 73 of those boxes," he observed, adding that the clothing drive, which received women's dresses, sweatshirts and jeans among clothing of all kinds, would travel on a truck Kimberly-Clark has donated to take contributions from New Milford to the coast.
On Tuesday, senior citizens held a tag-and-bake-sale at the New Milford Senior Center, with the funds raised from the event and also private contributions scheduled to go to the senior center in Bayou LaBatre, which survived the storm because the community center in which is located is inland on higher ground.
"It just really, really lets you know how much goodness is out there," said Caroline Overstreet, who heads the senior center in Bayou LaBatre, on Monday, and who said that a church group from High Ridge, Mo., had put a roof on her damaged house.
She painted a portrait of a town where coastal houses more than 200 years old were destroyed, with some persons unable to retrieve items from what remained of their homes because of the water moccasins now nesting there.
On Sunday, she said, the Woodmen of the World, a life insurance society based in Omaha, Neb., served 4,700 community dinners and distributed clothes and linens from the community center, with four community groups scheduled to serve dinner there on Thanksgiving day.
"They're just steady coming," Ms. Gainey said, referring to volunteers who have arrived in the city from Canada, Wisconsin, Missouri, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. She remarked that an 18-wheeler loaded with building supplies had arrived from Pennsylvania that week.
The fishing economy of the city, which last year had a budget of $2.5 million, remains in tatters. According to Ms. Gainey, more than 50 oyster and shrimp boats, some upside down and with holes, remain scattered across the marshland several miles in from the coast, with the shrimpers, she said, trying to find work on the boats that remain.
As late as July, however, discussions were underway between Mayor Stan Wright and developer and former gubernatorial candidate Tim James concerning the purchase of waterfront property as part of a proposal from Mr. James which, by itself, would have changed the landscape of the town dramatically. According to a report by the Associated Press published in the Mobile (Ala.) Register, Mr. James had proposed building a marina and condominiums as part of his re-creation of the fishing village as an upscale retreat. Tourist-related and service positions would, according to his scheme, have offered employment for the residents of the town.
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