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Grace Among the Devastation 
Destruction. Despair. Need. Grief. Hope. Heroism. Grace.

By Evelyn L. Kent
Catholic Charities USA

The guys from Florida thought they'd seen it all. After all, they endured four hurricanes in 2004 alone. But in Mississippi there was simply more. More destruction. More smells. More grace. More everything.

"I've worked a lot of disasters, and I've seen a lot of different types of destruction, but this one was one where the sights, the sounds, and the smells sort of bowled you over," said the Rev. Mr. Richard Turcotte, chief executive officer of Catholic Charities of Miami. The destruction killed the sounds of modern life along the coast, but the silence was punctuated by the smells—smells of sea rotting, of shrimp boats spoiling, of corrupted meat and of flourishing bacteria. "That will stay with me for a long time," Turcotte said. "I still wake up at night and smell it, and people are living in it."

Katrina's decimation of 90 miles of the Gulf Coast in Mississippi led Turcotte; Peter Routsis-Arroyo, president and CEO of Catholic Charities of Venice; Mark Dufva, executive director of Catholic Charities of Northwest Florida; and Rev. Mr. Marcus Hepburn, emergency management specialist of the Florida Catholic Conference, to loan themselves and their services to the Mississippi dioceses in its aftermath.

After Katrina raged through Mississippi and Louisiana, the seven dioceses and seven Catholic Charities offices in the state of Florida adopted the two dioceses in the state of Mississippi—the Diocese of Biloxi and the Diocese of Jackson—to help provide ongoing disaster relief efforts. The Mississippi agencies were not set up to be first responders in disasters, Dufva said. "It quickly became evident that technical assistance was needed," Arroyo said.

Technical assistance meant giving advice on how to help people in the storm's immediate aftermath; work through the different stages involved in providing hurricane relief; make connections with FEMA, other government agencies, the Red Cross, and other faith based organizations; and prepare for full-blown recovery sites where people can find what they need, Arroyo said.

The group scheduled a trip to Jackson, Miss., to consult with Catholic Charities officials there and moved on to Biloxi to do they same. They discovered utter destruction, not only from the winds of the hurricane but from the tidal surge, which destroyed most structures for an eighth of a mile inland and wreaked additional havoc for up to a mile inland, Dufva said.

Most hurricanes strike with precision, destroying neighborhoods rather than cities, for example. Katrina was indiscriminate. "Charley hit my coastline with a direct hit, where it went through a very narrow path. The scope of Katrina was really very overwhelming for everybody," Arroyo said. As a result, help could not come from the immediate surroundings and no sense of normalcy could be seen for miles. "You drive mile after mile seeing people’s belongings 20 feet up in trees," Dufva said.

What had started out as a trip to assess the damage turned into two weeks of round-the-clock- work where they helped set up and run recovery efforts. "In terms of a basic recovery effort, it was getting distribution sites up and helping to provide basic services when electricity still wasn't on. It became pretty apparent to us that to make that happen that we'd have to provide the infrastructure and staff it," Turcotte said.

They set about to do just that. "We broke it down in terms of where our best experience was," Turcotte said. His group was good at receiving and repackaging goods and had ample experience doing that during the hurricanes in 2004 and internationally. Dufva organized volunteers. Arroyo took on the logistics of getting things ordered and getting the material into the site. Hepburn set up shop in Jackson, where he corralled aid and supplies and shipped them south to Biloxi. There, Arroyo, Turcotte and Dufva set up a distribution center where volunteers broke down supplies and bagged up to 5,000 packages a day – food, water, clothes and cleaning agents, among other things – loaded them into trucks and cars, and delivered them into neighborhoods and to churches and parishes.

Working in unfamiliar territory, with some unknown agencies, with no locally available supplies, almost nonexistent communications and without a trained staff, the Florida crew helped to supply and establish 20 distribution centers along the Gulf Coast in three weeks. This was the first test of a mutual aid agreement that Florida agencies signed in 2004 to formalize aid assistance among agencies in the aftermath of disasters. None of the four thought the first test of the agreement would come out of state and with agencies and parishes that hadn't signed on to it. "We were making it up as we went," Turcotte said. "We had to make it up best as we could with the resources we had available."

The men speak of the destruction and their services in a businesslike manner. Disaster recovery is, after all, what they do. But dig a little deeper and you hear that business has nothing to do with their personal responses to the tragedy they witnessed. They listened to stories of people who literally let go of loved ones in the floodwaters, of a parent who lost a wheelchair-bound son when a boat landed on him. They heard these stories from people who were almost apologetic about telling them but who needed to say it anyway. "People are heroic in those first days, but sometimes they just need someone to give them a hug," Dufva said.

"The thing that was most difficult for me was the suffering of the people," Turcotte said. "Any time you gave them food or water, you had to take a minute and be a silent witness to their suffering.... When people reached out to you and told you their story, there was a real sort of respect and politeness about it. There was a recognition and respect for, 'I'm about to tell you this horrific story, and I apologize for using you as a sounding board.'"

It took a toll on all of the men. "Several times I got emotionally distraught. Even though you know you can get through, it's hard. After a while it wears you down," Hepburn said.

Sheri Cox, who worked in Dufva's office, has moved to Biloxi to head up long-term recovery efforts. She will have ongoing support from Catholic Charities USA and the Florida agencies as she and her office start case management. The story will continue to unfold in the months and years to come.