Volunteering in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
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By MEGAN KOSKOVICH
Story Created:
Aug 26, 2010 at 9:36 AM EDT
Story Updated:
Aug 26, 2010 at 9:36 AM EDT
(WKTV) - When people think of Hurricane Katrina, they often think about Louisiana and New Orleans but there were other states and cities hit hard such as Biloxi, Mississippi. NEWSChannel 2 spoke with a local man who went down to help as a nurse and ended up doing much different work.
When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, she did significant damage to several cities along the shore including Biloxi, Mississippi. Roger Chambers, a nurse at the Masonic Care Community, went down shortly after to volunteer his medical skills but was met with some roadblocks, "there was a lot of red tape as far as going as a nurse volunteer, so I ended up doing a little bit of everything," he said.
A little bit of everything included manual labor such as gutting homes that had been destroyed by flooding.
"You could see the high water line and pretty much everything below that had to be removed. By the time you were through with say a typical ranch style house, you'd have a pile of trash maybe the size of 3-4 VW buses."
Chambers says he met many different families in the three weeks he spent there. He says some families affected by Hurricane Katrina came back with family affected by Hurricane Rita, which struck near Texas shortly after.
"Even if people did have a house, a lot of times you'd have 2-3 families living together under really rather poor circumstances," Chambers said.
Although it doesn't feel like five years has passed, Chambers says he believes the region has a long way to go toward recovery and for some places, a full recovery may never come.
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