Ohio volunteers help after Katrina

The area is still devastated after last year's attack.
BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. (AP) -- Two Ohio volunteers cut pieces of aluminum for a house trailer that has been installed in Terry Nelson's backyard, one more small step in the bayou's Hurricane Katrina recovery.
Nelson said his 80-year-old mother-in-law will live in the trailer because Katrina sent 5 feet of floodwater into her house, even though it is about 500 yards from the Bayou La Batre waterfront.
The volunteers, Sharon Brewer and Andrea Moorehead, both of Hamilton, 18 miles north of Cincinnati, arrived with a 22-member group from the Ohio Baptist Mission on a weeklong trip to this Alabama fishing village.
The bayou, wrecked by Katrina's floodwaters when the storm struck Aug. 29, has been embraced by volunteers from around the nation who are cleaning yards, removing downed trees and repairing roofs as the first anniversary of the hurricane nears.
While Brewer and Moorehead worked on the trailer porch, volunteers from the Vinton Wesleyan Church in Vinton, Va., mowed the grass and rolled a protective sealant on the trailer roof.
Nelson, 58, who was a shrimper before he broke his back in an accident, said he could not have completed the trailer job without the volunteers. He said it took five months of regulatory wrangling just to get permission to set the trailer up.
"I couldn't get any help," he said.
About 3,900 Katrina victims still live in temporary housing of various types across Alabama, mostly in Mobile and Baldwin counties, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That figure includes 1,313 travel trailers on commercial and private property and on other FEMA-leased sites.
Logistics
FEMA pays the city of Bayou La Batre $20,000 a month to lease Zirlott Park for trailers but plans to close it by the end of this month and return it to the ballpark it was previously. As of Thursday, there were 26 families still living in the park -- down from 100 when it opened.
Even with the help of FEMA and volunteers, no one doubts it will take years for the bayou to completely recover. Katrina's storm surge covered two-thirds of this city of 2,725. With its seafood and shipbuilding economy struggling back, there remain concerns about flood insurance, lack of workers and high fuel prices.
Salvage crews still are trying to remove some Katrina-tossed shrimp boats from the swampy bayou woods.