As Aid Lags, Volunteers Shoulder Rebuilding on Gulf Coast

Several expressed outrage that there was no mention of the hurricane recovery in President Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday.

"We still look like a bomb hit us, and then the president in his national address doesn't even mention us?" said Larry Randall, a retired boat captain and a coordinator of relief efforts at the Pearlington Recovery Center. "That really hurt."

Katrina made a nearly direct hit on this modest community, which once had about 1,700 people, about 77 percent of them white, about 20 percent black, census figures show. Most maintained houses -- a typical one sold for about $50,000 before the storm -- and the rest had mobile homes.

Katrina pushed ashore a surge of water that simply washed many homes away and filled others with as much as 10 feet of water, according to recovery officials. Eight local people died. Several rode out the storm by climbing tall trees and resting in their branches; others jumped from rooftops into boats.

Now the vast majority of the residents who have returned live in FEMA trailers, the skinny, 27-foot-long homes on wheels provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that house families in cramped quarters. Along the woodsy roadsides, hand-painted plywood signs offer community encouragement -- "Keep Hope Alive" and "Katrina Was Big, God Was Bigger." Stray dogs roam.

Every week, scores of volunteers descend on this community to fill the cots at the school library or the parsonage at the local Baptist Church or a camp run by Presbyterians. Last week there were more than 80 here, but at other times there have been as many as 200.

By day, they go out in work crews, framing houses, putting up drywall, installing doors. At night, some have prayer meetings.

This past week, at various sites one could run into Amish from Pennsylvania, Catholics from Massachusetts, Methodists from Illinois, Baptists from Mississippi and a Florida church group. The Amish crews, clad in their distinctive suspenders and wide-brimmed hats, have a non-Amish driver who takes them to work sites.

"Many of us were born with a hammer in our hands," said Sam Stoltzfus, 41, part of an Amish crew from the Williamsport, Pa., area. "This is fun. Yes, we're supposed to help people, but it's not like a chain around our necks."

Russell Geeraerts, 38, a general contractor from Helena, Mont., said he came down after the hurricane "for all the wrong reasons." He was going to volunteer for a couple of weeks and then come back with his own work crew to make some money.

"But then I asked myself, 'How could you?' " he said last week after lunch at a local kitchen, which like the various camps was set up to serve volunteers. "Just look at this place."

The $3.2 billion in federal aid disbursed by the Mississippi program has largely been untouchable by people in Pearlington.