By the Thousands, Faithful Toil to Resurrect Gulf Cities

Muslim volunteers purchased and converted a mobile home into a health clinic and distributed cleaning kits donated by Mormons.

So many volunteers are arriving that faith organizations are struggling to house them.

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has built five "volunteer villages" in church parking lots and on local government land. Each houses up to 90 people in tents. Five more villages are planned.

Samaritan's Purse, an evangelical Christian relief group rebuilding 500 Biloxi homes, is putting up 90 volunteers each week on the grounds of a half-demolished Methodist conference center. The Salvation Army is constructing barracks for 240 under a former Biloxi football stadium, said Maj. Rob Vincent, commander of the Christian group's Mississippi recovery effort.

The massive campaign has drawn grateful praise from beleaguered local officials, who say that federal money has been slow to arrive and that many of the poor will slip through the cracks of the qualifying standards for federal aid.

For the poor, rebuilding has "fallen squarely on the shoulders of faith-based groups and other NGOs," said Biloxi City Council member Bill Stallworth, referring to nongovernmental organizations. "The government basically has not done a whole lot."

The storm has meant desperation for the vast majority of the residents of East Biloxi, a community of one-story, wood-frame homes of African Americans, whites and Vietnamese Americans, where one-third live below the poverty line.

On Tucker's most recent trip, one man ran out into the street to flag him down.

Nhieu Nguyen, 33, had lost his restaurant in the storm. His home is a soggy shell, and he, his wife and their five young children sleep on the floor in what remains of their living room.

Nguyen begged Tucker for help.

"I don't have no flood insurance," he said, pulling out documents inside his home showing that he owes $80,000 on the destroyed structure. "I don't have nothing."

Tucker looked around at the dark mold speckling the wall studs, the children eating noodles in the stripped kitchen and Nguyen's papers. In homes around Tucker, overwhelmed volunteers from Northern Virginia were up to their armpits -- sometimes literally -- in work, tearing out soaked ceiling panels, nail-gunning shingles, installing new walls.