Churches Play Key Role in Katrina Aid

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ALEX CHADWICK, host:

This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Alex Chadwick.

President Bush is back visiting the Gulf Coast, where he'll participate in a Habitat for Humanity post-hurricane rebuilding project in Louisiana tomorrow. Six weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the region, food and medicine are still scarce in some rural parts of southern Mississippi. Some churches are distributing supplies there. NPR's Jason DeRose visited one such church in Long Beach, Mississippi.

(Soundbite of idling vehicles)

JASON DeROSE reporting:

Hundreds of idling cars snake around the parking lot of the 500-member Gulf Coast Worship Center. It is noon and it is hot, and the mosquitoes are as thick as the humidity. But Bill Waterman(ph) is out directing traffic and has the happiest face you will see in this devastated landscape.

Mr. BILL WATERMAN (Construction Engineering Consultant): Cars start lining up about 8:15 in the morning. By 10:00 when we open, we usually have about 500 cars in the line. They come through and they're able to get water and general food items, baby products, personal hygiene products, feminine products.

DeROSE: Waterman, a construction engineering consultant from Midland, Michigan, came to Mississippi after seeing scenes of the utter destruction.

You know, you've taken a huge amount of time off of work. Why is this more meaningful to you than what you do in your normal work life?

Mr. WATERMAN: People here are so appreciative. And I can't imagine what it's like to lose my house, family members, friends, my job and everything else. And I would just hope that if it happened up there, these same people we're helping would come north and do the same thing for us.

DeROSE: One of those in line for food is Phil Barfield(ph), a Realtor from nearby Gulfport, Mississippi. Katrina destroyed his house and his office. He heard about Gulf Coast Worship Center from a friend.

Mr. PHIL BARFIELD: He came through last week and said it was a great place to come. We decided to come check it out.

DeROSE: Are you living with friends or how is this all working?

Mr. BARFIELD: Yeah, we're actually living at my mother-in-law's house. All of us has lost all of our homes.

DeROSE: So you have three families living in that house?

Mr. BARFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Walls are closing in. (Laughs)

DeROSE: The stress of loss and multiple families crammed into homes led the church to ask psychologist Scott Bandoroff from the Ashland, Oregon, to help out by doing crisis counseling. His role sometimes is just to listen to people's fears.

Mr. SCOTT BANDOROFF (Psychologist): As one of my clients here put it, there's no ability to establish any sense of routine. You can't even drive the same roads each day. So nothing has any semblance of order, which is one of the things that helps people to re-establish some sense of control of their lives when they've had such a random event pull their world out from under them.

(Soundbite of zipper)

DeROSE: The Gulf Coast Worship Center has a fully functioning medical clinic out back. It's set up in a German mobile military hospital tent and is being run by nurse practitioner Dorothy Davidson from Knoxville, Tennessee.

Ms. DOROTHY DAVIDSON (Nurse Practitioner): I think this is the most elaborate tent you'll ever see. It has dual insulation--that's the white inner fabric against the olive drab. We have exam rooms with privacy screens set up. We have temperature control. We have oxygen. And then you move into--this is actually their trauma resuscitation room.

DeROSE: The clinic has already served nearly 5,000 patients. All of this, the food and supplies, the psychological evaluations and the medical care, is all free of charge and all due to people willing to give what they could when it was needed most, says Gulf Coast Worship Center's senior pastor, Jay West.

Reverend JAY WEST (Gulf Coast Worship Center): The only thing stronger than the storm has been the recovery. I wouldn't choose to do this again, I didn't pick it this time, but I would pick the recovery again. It's been unbelievable.

DeROSE: West expects his church will have served more than 50,000 people by the end of the week. Jason DeRose, NPR News.

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