Catholic Charities In the News
Catholic Charities hit ground running – before and after
September 13, 2008 - The Clarion Herald
By Peter Finney, Jr
It was more than simply the maroon T-shirts that made the staff members of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans visible before during and after Hurricane Gustav.
The preparations they made since Hurricane Katrina for the impact of another big storm paid off in a much more coordinated response to Hurricane Gustav, said Gordon Wadge, co-president and CEO of Catholic Charities.
“There were obviously a lot of lessons learned from Katrina, so there was a lot of preparation this time around,” Wadge said while greeting returning residents at the Union Passenger Terminal Sept. 5. “The thing was we had winds and not a flood this time. Honestly, if we had had a flood, I don’t know what might have happened.”
Wadge and Catholic Charities co-president and CEO Jim Kelly remained with Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes at the St. Louis Cathedral rectory throughout the storm, which allowed them easy access to emergency response personnel throughout the storm.
They went to the Union Passenger Terminal on the weekend of Aug. 30-31 and helped residents board buses and trains out of town. The evacuation process went extremely smoothly, Wadge said, but he still wondered if everyone had left. There were many buses lined up – and few passengers – at the terminal on Aug. 31, the day before Gustav made landfall.
“Somebody was asking me if the city was 100 percent evacuated,” Wadge said. “I said, ‘Well, maybe.’ You don’t really know that until the floodwaters come and then people have to leave. We can make that assumption because we didn’t see a lot of foot traffic in the neighborhoods. Whether that’s because people heeded the mayor and went into lockdown in their own homes and weren’t out on the streets, I don’t know.
Evacuees difficult to estimate
“It’s hard to guesstimate how many evacuated, ” Wadge added. “We certainly can make the assumption that fewer people stayed in the city this time than for Katrina. I think Gov. Jindal said it best when he said every storm is different and had its own personality based on its impact point and severity. This time the factor was not floodwaters but downed utilities across the region. Now the question is how we deal with that.”
Wadge said Catholic Charities’ extensive list of neighborhood community centers could play a major role in helping seniors get through the loss of power.
“One of the things we’ve talked about – and we’ve got to get our facilities back on line first – would be to use our community centers as day centers for seniors,” Wadge said. “You can imagine a senior citizen who doesn’t have electricity and who is most impacted by the heat and dehydration. We can use our community centers, which have air conditioning, to provide a place for seniors to have a place of recovery during the daytime.”
Staged food from Lafayette
Wadge said Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana lost power at its main warehouse in Elmwood, forcing the agency to stage food from its warehouse in Lafayette.
Canned goods and dry food products could still be delivered out of Elmwood. Food provided by Second Harvest was used at Red Cross shelters and evacuee drop off points throughout the region, Wadge said. In some cases, the Salvation Army cooked the food Second Harvest supplied.
Helping other dioceses
Because New Orleans was less affected by Gustav than other areas, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans dispatched two of its administrative staff members to the Dioceses of Baton Rouge and Houma-Thibodaux to help coordinate relief efforts.
Tom Costanza, a native of Napoleonville, went to Assumption Parish in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and helped bring in food and generators. Aaron Portier, a native of Houma, is working with the Houma-Thibodaux Diocese.
Wadge said Rob Gorman, head of Catholic Social Services in Houma-Thibodaux, was persevering through “overwhelming” personal circumstances.
“Rob has a wonderful spirit,” Wadge said. “He evacuated to Baton Rouge, and he said on one of our conference calls, ‘The good news is that people tell me my house is OK. The bad news is two trees fell in Baton Rouge and crushed both of my cars, so I have no way to get back.’”
“The archbishop is very committed to us as Catholic Charities lifting up our sisters and brothers from across the state, especially in great appreciation for what they did for us post-Katrina,” Wadge said.
The archdiocese made available two buildings on its Hope Haven campus in Marrero to shelter evacuees from Plaquemines Parish.
Gaining public trust
Wadge said he was hopeful that because the evacuation process went off without any major hitches, people would gain confidence in their governmental leaders and be more apt to follow future evacuation orders.
“We don’t ever want a sense of complacency in terms of a threatening disaster,” Wadge said. “We always wonder, what’s the next disaster and are people going to be as inclined to leave? The hope would be that since this went very, very smoothly, people will be less traumatized by Katrina so that when there is another hurricane, folks will have some degree of confidence that, yes, I can evacuate and I can return and it’s not going to be an overwhelmingly chaotic situation. Otherwise, you’re going to have folks less inclined to evacuate the next time.”
Wadge cautioned that the days and weeks after a major hurricane are “a marathon and not a sprint.”
“You really have to condition yourself physically and mentally,” Wadge said. “Our natural compassion and human tendency as church and as Catholic Charities is to want to be present to everybody, and we can’t. That’s why we’ve focused on our core ministries.”
Those ministries are food and emergency supplies distribution, counseling and case management.
“In its simplest form, case management is assessing a person’s needs and connecting the person to the resources to meet those needs and staying in touch and doing follow-up,” Wadge said.
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