Pearlington Report Card

A dynamic report on the activities of the members of C.O.D.R.A. - the Coalition of Disaster Relief Agencies operating in Pearlington, Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Each member group is autonomous and selects its own projects, completely independent of both C.O.D.R.A. and the Pearlington Recovery Center.

11 November, 2006

Tom Dalessandri: The Pearlington Project

Greetings all,

The following is a report on our most recent trip:

Howard Bixler and myself drove to Pearlington loaded with tools and appliances. Linda Edwards from Pickin' Up The Pieces and Eileen Powers and her son Alex Yamich had just left a few days prior and had continued the work on some of our projects.

We followed up with Jon and Nan Givens. Jon had was recovering from back surgery (he rebuilt most of his house himself with recycled materials from his destroyed home) We offered to build his porch but as in the past he declined asking us instead to help others in need.

We moved on to Debbie Sonnier's where we installed her countertops purchased with AmeriCares funds, purchased and installed rain gutters, interior trim, and cut up the gigantic tree that Mark and Roger from Carb Fire had cut down a few weeks earlier.

From there we moved onto to Lena Maculis where Howard installed bathtubs and fixed flooring issues.

Our primary focus was Sandra Merla's. As I had mentioned earlier, Linda and her crew and Eileen and son Alex had done some great debris removal and demolition work for us. We gathered some volunteers from the Pearlington Resource Center and finished tearing down the damaged front wall, tore up the flooring to exposed the damaged floor supports and removed the damaged roofing. Howard repaired the floor supports and secured the roofing. That job is now getting very close to begin reconstruction, hopefully on our next two trips. Sandra was very happy and can now begin to see the future prospects of returning to her home, something she, until now wasn't sure would ever happen.

We finished installing some appliances at the Taylors and met with the Dawsey's. You may recall, the Dawsey's were in a leaking molding FEMA trailer. Thanks to Liza Cowen from AmeriCares who made a few phone calls, their trailer was replaced and we are sizing up the completion of their Walls of Hope home. Much interior work needs to be done and we are putting them on our work list.

I met with Shirley Thompson who also has the Wall's of Hope home under construction. She is moving along nicely and needs some assistance that we will help provide.

We went to Raymond Diaz place as well at the request of Tim Goodnow to size up a structural problem. Howard put his expertise as a builder to work and will get back to Tim G. on his findings.
I met with Liza Cowen from AmeriCares and Sarah Pinskey from Kaboom. Liza asked if I would tour Sarah through Pearlington. That Saturday, Kaboom was scheduled to build a playground at the relocated school site in the Kiln. Howard and I went to help with the project and found that the community turned out in huge numbers to get the job done. It was quite the event.

This was one of our longer stays and a special thanks to the Taylor's for putting up with us and "feeding us" for a long nine days. Even with all our effort time went by fast and we found ourselves not getting done as much as we would have liked.

Pearlington is moving along. Probably about 35% of the homes are built or under construction. Still there are as many that haven't been touched or are in need of assistance. We have applied for a second AmeriCares grant and hope to assist families with other grants that I am researching and applying for.

On the way out of town I took Howard through New Orleans. He was absolutely astounded by the devastation and lack of progress there and throughout the Gulf.

We can all be very proud of what we have accomplished but we must never take for granted all that remains to be done. We are their best hope for recovery. The saga continues....


Special thanks for this last trip to: Hilary, Ron L., Taylors, Liza, Eileen & Alex, Linda Edwards, Lauren Taylor, Vern Holmes, Larry Randall and many others who made our last trip both possible and a success.

Next trip is scheduled for the weekend after Thanksgiving.


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