Megan Finn (top photo) and her family, washed out of New Orleans, parked in New Haven — and stayed. Like many New Haveners moved by the tragedy, Frank and Paula Panzarella (middle photo) travelled to New Orleans to help people rebuild; then they returned home to raise money and consciousness here. Sheila Allen Bell (bottom photo) tried to figure out how to welcome refugees to town. A year after Hurricane Katrina unleashed its fury on the Big Easy, here’s a look at how some New Haveners new and old responded.
Megan Finn and her husband Adam Wilson had both been living in New Orleans for eight years when Katrina struck. Megan had returned to Thomaston, Connecticut, just before the storm to attend her baby shower, and was stuck here while Adam rode out Katrina in New Orleans. Now they have a baby daughter, Evelyn Jane, and have been living in New Haven for the past year.
Adam said, “I think overall New Haven has been friendly and open and very helpful. Unfortunately, it seems like the farther you get from the epicenter of the hurricane, the more help you can get from government agencies and non-profit organizations. We got a lot of help from Interfaith Refugee Ministry and also from the state of Connecticut.”
Adam has been able to keep his job, working from home for a D.C.-based non-profit. Megan takes care of baby Evelyn Jane. The two of them were fixtures at this year’s International Festival (when the photo above was taken), which had a Katrina theme.
“It’s important that people recognize that things have not gotten better in New Orleans,” Adam said. “Nothing’s been fixed, nothing’s been improved, there’s no plan for the city. People are really struggling, not only the deep physical wounds, but the psychological wounds as well are still really overwhelming.” He called the government response —” or lack thereof —” “disgusting.”
Frank and Paula Panzarella agree. The New Haven couple spent part of January volunteering in New Orleans and also in the bayou country southwest of the city.
Frank called himself an “all-around handyman.” His skills proved invaluable when he drove his station wagon full of tools to New Orleans, where he hooked up with a grassroots effort called Common Ground Relief. Frank (shown holding a sweatshirt displaying the Common Ground logo) helped repair one of the few buildings left standing in the Lower Ninth Ward to create a neighborhood distribution center. A month later he got a pleasant surprise while watching a national TV news program, Nightline.
“I saw the house I’d been working on with a stove on the floor and a middle-aged black man sitting there in the house that we had built. That was a great feeling to see that we actually had helped them set up a center there.”
He said his feelings about what’s gone on in New Orleans over the past year are mixed. He expressed admiration for all the grassroots efforts that have helped local people gut their homes, find missing pets, hand out essentials like food and cleaning supplies. But in the bigger picture, “in terms of the government’s response, it’s horrible, because an enormous amount of work still needs to be done and hasn’t been done. I don’t think there’s the will or the desire to get it done.”
Paula (pictured above with Frank) worked in a distribution center in the bayou.
“The whole sense of community was really strong. The people who lived there and the people who volunteered at Common Ground were working for the same cause of helping provide for each other in the neighborhood.” She said that often when residents came to get supplies, they would bring bags of tangerines from their trees to pass out to others.
The Panzarellas gave many talks after returning to New Haven to all kinds of groups. “My intention was to be an instigator,” Frank said, “and get a bunch of people jazzed enough to financially support the work, physically, those who could, to go down there, and also to just spread awareness” of the current situation, which he describes as dire. They know they “jazzed” at least a few people, like the retired teacher who sends Paula a check every month to forward to Common Ground.
Sheila Allen Bell (pictured) has a unique perspective on New Haven’s response to Katrina. She’s the city’s community services administrator and was the point person on the detailed plan city officials and non-profit agencies developed to welcome Katrina evacuees to New Haven and provide health care, employment and housing. Then FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Team) announced it would not be airlifting evacuees to New Haven. Instead, a smaller number came on their own, people who mostly already had connections in the city —” 116 individuals representing 55 families. Allen Bell said by mid-fall last year, the state of Connecticut took over responsibility for all the Katrina evacuees, so she’s not sure which of them have left and which are still here.
Some local groups, especially grassroots anti-poverty activists, criticized the city for doing more for potential evacuees than for the people in need who were already living in New Haven. Allen Bell doesn’t see it that way; she said the process the city followed was the same with both groups.
“What was new was people stepping up, [for example] with housing. For my everyday work, I don’t have people stepping up and saying, ‘I have four rental units that you can have for individuals, for free.’” She said she thinks that day to day, under “normal” circumstances, most residents think local poor folks have access to resources —” certainly more resources than Katrina survivors, who had absolutely nothing.