Katrina evacuees settle into Columbia

Despite minor setbacks like not having a pot to cook gumbo or being able to find the spices they need, New Orleans evacuees are assimilating to life in mid-Missouri.

Hurricane Katrina brought 520 New Orleans residents to Columbia, said Jane Williams, a representative of Trinity Ministries, a not-for-profit organization that funneled resources from local churches beginning in early September.

“In many ways, they feel as if they’ve been given a new life,” Williams said.

Cindy Mustard, of the Volunteer Action Center, estimated that half of 520 evacuees are still in the Columbia area.

“When people arrived in town, many were lost,” Williams said. “Several of them didn’t even have cars.”

Columbia’s Disaster Recovery Center reports that 120 evacuee families registered upon their arrival in mid-Missouri.

Housing seemed to be everyone’s first concern. Landlords and churches helped most people find a place to stay. “As far as I know, almost everyone has permanent housing,” Mustard said.

The next step was furniture.

Williams said volunteer Bob McNair provided a place for furniture on Commerce Street, and volunteer Bob Lemone provided storage space for household goods in the old Tri-Con Building. Both locations were used for donated items offered free of charge to evacuees and those who need them.

After churches and other volunteers from the community offered to help, evacuee Xiomara Wallace considered herself found.

“I have a chance to start over,” Wallace said. “Even though I lived in New Orleans for the past 50 years, I enjoy being in Columbia.”

Wallace has a daughter at MU’s School of Journalism and another at Hickman High School. She is grateful to be near her children and to have a job. Money is tight. She has yet to turn on her heat.

Freddie Owens, who left New Orleans and moved to Mexico, Mo., with his fiancee Kenya Patterson, likes mid-Missouri, too. He questioned the decision of his sisters, Ebony and Monique Nelson, to return to the Gulf Coast. “They are going back to a mess. We’ll see them back here next year,” he said.

Owens and brother-in-law Jerry Cline have been hired as truck drivers by Onyx Waste Services in Centralia. “I’ll actually be making more money than I was in New Orleans,” Owens said.

Columbia/Boone County Health Department, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, the United Way, Lutheran Children and Family Service and others have formed a long-term recovery committee to assist with needs of disaster victims in the future.