Austintown aid group sees great need in Gulf Coast

Adopt a community and send help, says the head of a humanitarian aid group.
By JEANNE STARMACK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- Imagine you lost your home and maybe even loved ones in a hurricane.
But you're still trying to do your job as a police officer. You find yourself unable to change out of sewage-drenched clothes and canoeing through the aisles of a Wal-Mart to find food on the top shelves that's still edible.
Imagine there's no drinking water. You're sleeping on a concrete floor.
And day after day, no one comes.
Needs help now
The founder of a humanitarian aid group here wants people to know that the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast needs help now, and that even the police officers in New Orleans, who stayed on their jobs after Hurricane Katrina, are not getting aid.
Kathleen Price, who runs the township-based organization Mission of Love, returned Thursday from the New Orleans area with nine other people who made the trip.
The group was there for a week, half of which was spent in New Orleans and half of which was spent in a town called Jean Lafitte.
Don't delay
Price said Monday that churches and organizations should not wait to offer help because people aren't getting it from government agencies or the Red Cross.
She and others who made the trip said that not only is there no help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but also that the military actively tries to keep volunteers from getting through to people who are trying to survive in deplorable conditions.
Six members of the group got to the New Orleans area Sept. 8 with three large vans full of supplies. The others followed days later with two more large truckloads.
They stayed with volunteers in the Baton Rouge area, and after many phone calls, they were given a pass to travel to New Orleans and then to Jean Lafitte.
Group members told of being escorted through military checkpoints with heavily armed guards.
Outskirts deserted
Group member Brad Jagger, pastor of First Federated Church of North Jackson, said the outskirts of New Orleans was deserted. "All the way into the inner city, it was a deserted ghost town. We didn't see FEMA or anyone," the Rev. Mr. Jagger said.
In New Orleans, the group gave supplies to police and to National Guardsmen who had nothing to drink.
And they found members of the city police department's Sixth Precinct trying to operate out of the parking lot of a Wal-Mart. "We were the first to bring food, water and air mattresses; they had nothing to sleep on," Mr. Jagger said.
South of New Orleans in Jean Lafitte, supplies the group brought were unloaded into the town hall. Food was separated into plastic shopping bags, and townspeople lined up to get a bag of food and a pallet of water. Group members said the town had no food left.
Another trip coming up
Price said there will be another Mission of Love trip to the area, perhaps in the next two or three weeks. She said that organizations that want to help can adopt a community -- find a town in the ravaged area and offer whatever help it needs.
"It's doable," she said. "Six of us hopped in a truck and away we went; so if churches and organizations get together, they can help."
Price said Mission of Love will accept donations, but she would rather have other organizations collect and sort supplies, then take them to Mission of Love's warehouse at the Army Arsenal in Ravenna.
Monetary donations may be sent to Mission of Love Foundation, 2054 Hemlock Court, Youngstown 44515.
starmack@vindy.com