Recently, Martin Costello and Cole McMahon of the Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps team visited Houston. Here’s a blog entry they put together about their trip.

Hurricanes and the aftermath of these natural disasters have become all too familiar to communities across the United States in recent years. The most recent example is the devastation caused by Hurricane Ike.

On September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall on the east coast of Texas at Baytown. Due to “Katrina Fatigue,” or other media focuses this year, Hurricane Ike may be the biggest hurricane-related disaster you never heard about. With early estimates of $27 billion in damages, Ike is the third costliest storm in U.S. history.

From left: Martin Costello – Program Manager, AmeriCorps; Pastor Danny Bittie; AmeriCorps Fellow Deyanira Silva; Cole McMahon – Sr. Program Manager; Bill Eckert - HVLP

In less than three months after the hurricane, Equal Justice Works partnered with the Texas Access to Justice Foundation and the Corporation for National and Community Service to place an AmeriCorps Legal Fellow with the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Project (HVLP). The AmeriCorps Fellow, Deyanira Silva, will work with volunteer lawyers and law students to help victims of Hurricane Ike. Deyanira joins eight other AmeriCorps Fellows serving areas in Louisiana and Mississippi that are still recovering from the affects of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Gustav.

The city of Houston is familiar with the impact a hurricane can have on a community. The Houston community took on as many as 350,000 evacuees after Hurricane Katrina, only to bear the brunt of Hurricane Ike. David Mandell, HVLP’s Executive Director, called the response to Katrina refugees, “In many ways, Houston’s proudest moment.”

We visited Houston last week to meet Deyanira and representatives of HVLP to see the project in its first week of activity. We came away with two impressions: 1) HVLP is committed to the service of those affected by Hurricane Ike and, through Deyanira, will provide outstanding services to those in need; and 2) the damage done by Ike is staggering. In Houston, broken windows and FEMA Disaster Recovery Centers demonstrate that Ike happened only three short months ago. David Mandell sought to show us the impact of Ike on communities near the coast. We traveled to Oak Island, an unincorporated settlement in Chambers County, Texas – one of the poorest counties in the country. Our tour guide was a local pastor named Danny Bittie from Old River Baptist Church. He has been organizing the community with restoration and rebuilding projects. We toured the area and saw houses destroyed, reduced to rubble, and sometimes washed away. There used to be 350 homes in Oak Island, but Hurricane Ike demolished 90% of them. The surging water also left debris scattered all over the county which will take months, if not years to fully clean.

Only a foundation remains of this former home. The current resident is living in a temporary FEMA trailer located at the far right of the picture.

The residents of Oak Island will face many of the same issues as those displaced by Katrina. Besides all of the basic needs like food, shelter and safety, the people affected by Ike have substantial legal needs. HVLP will be assisting with issues such as clearing titles to properties so clients can apply for aid from FEMA; assisting with insurance claims, construction and repair issues; landlord/tenant issues such as eviction; and many more. Through the work of Deyanira and HVLP, many more people in the Houston area will have the chance to return to normal life. For more information about this program and the other AmeriCorps Fellows, please visit http://www.equaljusticeworks.org/programs/americorps/general.