By Mike Smith of The Advocate WESTLAKE — A language not usually heard in southwest Louisiana resounds through the unfinished walls of a hurricane-damaged house. A group of Amish volunteers, speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, hammer away at rebuilding it...
Jay Finkbiner was frustrated. After catching a flight from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Corpus Christi, Texas—where he would volunteer for Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS)—he waited at baggage claim. And…no bag. “I went to the airport...
“Cheering and hollering!” Rev. Roy Platt clearly remembers the reaction in Jennings, Louisiana, when Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers first arrived at the Jennings Church of Christ. “When MDS came down to survey our facility, it...
Story by Theresa Schmidt for KPLC News 7 Lake Charles, LA (KPLC) – Many in Southwest Louisiana are still struggling to recover from Hurricane Laura and the disasters that followed. A collaboration between Mennonites and Amish, along with...
Blue tarp after blue tarp. That’s the view for weary residents in the city of Lake Charles, Louisiana, after they’ve been through disaster on top of disaster. Hurricane Laura made landfall on Aug. 27, 2020 just south of Lake Charles, as a...
Michael Bering paused in the shade on his back patio in LaPlace, Louisiana, chatting for a few minutes with his brother, Edward, who has come by to lend him some moral support as he copes with the havoc Hurricane Ida wreaked on his home. Michael’s...
Sixty-seven-year-old Pamela Haskin was sweeping, cleaning, and sweating up a storm inside a hurricane-damaged home in LaPlace, Louisiana. She’d traveled from her home in western Pennsylvania several days before, but still seemed a little surprised...
Philip Hirtle pulled moldy drywall, soggy carpet and bedraggled belongings out of his mother-in-law’s home, sweating in the early October Louisiana Gulf Coast heat, hauling pickup truckload after truckload to the growing pile at end of the long,...
As power continues to come back in Louisiana, many residents are returning to survey severe flood damage from Hurricane Ida. Many other states are also reeling from deadly tornadoes and flooding unleashed by Ida’s remnants as the storm cut a wide...
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