Destruction in New Orleans

Sunday, Aug. 29, 2010, marks five years since Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast. This week we remember this major U.S. disaster – the sadness and destruction, the survivors, the responders, and the lives changed.  

It’s been five years. Five years since one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded ripped across the U.S. Gulf Coast and became one of the worst disasters in U.S. history.  

The heavy rain, the storm surge, the high winds – it all came together to cause such destruction, sadness and chaos. Entire towns along the coast seemed to disappear – sometimes moved by wind, or sometimes under floodwaters.  And in this storm’s aftermath, the Fellowship responded for days, week, months – even years.  Hundreds of individuals and churches came together to make a difference in lives of people like Guidroz family. Following their evacuation from New Orleans, the Guidroz family stayed in the community ministry center of CBF partner Broadmoor Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, La.  

Shortly after the storm, Guidroz and his daughter show a photo they took from New Orleans during the storm.

Husband and father Warren wanted to evacuate New Orleans, but his elderly mother couldn’t be moved, and he couldn’t leave her. So they rode out the storm – lucky to survive. For four days after the storm, Warren was in a boat rescuing stranded people from rooftops and attics. And several days later when he couldn’t find a place for his family to stay, Broadmoor Baptist offered their building as a temporary home.   

Also escaping New Orleans was Jackie Armstrong and her then 84-year-old mother Lillian Riley, who took shelter at CBF partner Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. When floodwaters started rising in their home, they went outside and someone in a boat rescued them. They were evacuated to the Astrodome in Houston, where members of Tallowood came looking for people who wanted to move into the church’s shelter. Armstrong and her mom said then that they thanked God for getting them to the church.  

These are just two of the families that Fellowship Baptists reached out to in the days and weeks following the storm. Many CBF partner churches around the Southeast also became shelters, providing life’s basic necessities to displaced evacuees. Amid the destruction, the sadness and the chaos, Fellowship Baptists were being the presence of Christ, offering a word of hope and a helping hand.   

  Other Katrina blog entries:
• Remembering the Sadness, the Destruction and Survival
• Responders See Change
• Recovery in Alabama and Mississippi
• Recovery in Louisiana
• How the Fellowship Changed