Shreveport, LA: Hurricane Katrina Special Report

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UPDATE: Shreveport, One Year Later Coverage from 2005 The estimated 5,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in Shreveport, LA, are slowly settling into their lives 333 miles away from New Orleans. Yet, in the year following Hurricane Katrina's unwanted visit to the Gulf Coast, the workforce development staff of Goodwill Industries of North Louisiana is also just beginning to breathe normally again. In the immediate weeks after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the Shreveport Goodwill staff worked tirelessly to assist evacuees flooding into this northwestern Louisiana city. The Goodwill quickly set up shop at the three shelters operating in the Shreveport-Bossier City area, which eventually consolidated into two sites. At both locations, the Goodwill was the only charity on the premises and the sole provider of job placement services to hurricane evacuees. A year after the initial event, a number of challenges remain due to the influx of thousands of evacuees into Shreveport including increased competition for funding and services, as well as a transient population. On the positive side, there's increased coordination among area nonprofits and the introduction of new energy in her city increased economic development, as well as an infusion of New Orleans culture. The city now has numerous good musicians, who are helping drive a larger jazz presence on the Shreveport Riverwalk. "I think the community, as a whole, has welcomed [the evacuees] with open arms," says Romney Firor, Vice President. "They were welcomed in and treated like family." Within days of the storm event, the Shreveport Goodwill staff worked with the City and Shreveport Chamber of Commerce to host a job fair, which drew nearly 1,000 Katrina evacuees and about 100 employers. A dozen Goodwill workforce development professionals assisted the efforts by leafing through phone books and asking employers to place evacuees in jobs. The Goodwill placed 426 evacuees in employment 275 of whom were still on the job, as of August 6. The agency also provided case management services to 2,011 evacuees. Affordable housing is scarce, and many evacuees have had to move to rural areas, taking them further from job centers and making them difficult to track. And the numbers of evacuees with emotional hurdles are many. "There's a lot of barriers with this population," Firor says. "A lot of people dealing with depression. You're also seeing a lot of people with post-traumatic syndrome." "You're taking…generations of people who experienced extreme poverty with a totally different culture and putting them in new communities," Firor adds. "It takes a long time for people to do that."

'Making Things Happen' at Evacuees' Shelter  

Shreveport, LA (2005) — Frank Garrity spent 16 days at a friend’s apartment in Arabie, LA, watching the waters from Hurricane Katrina rise and fall. But, when Garrity arrived three days ago in Shreveport with his dog, Charlie, one of the first things he wanted to do was find a job.

He found Julie Bass, Manager of Workforce Development for North Louisiana Goodwill Industries Rehabilitation Center (Shreveport), who promptly set up the printing press operator with a job interview.

“Even if I had no place to go, Julie would have had a job for me,” said Garrity, who soon will be moving to Pensacola, FL, to be with his daughter. “If it wasn’t for [Goodwill], then I don’t know where I’d be.”

For the past two-and-a-half weeks, workforce development professionals working for the Shreveport Goodwill have labored intensively to place storm evacuees staying at area shelters into jobs. On September 15, the Goodwill’s temporary and permanent workforce development staff continued greeting evacuees, thumbing through phone books and asking employers to give their charges a chance.

This week alone, the workforce development staff has processed at least 1,000 people, said Romney Firor, the Goodwill’s Vice President of Workforce Development. Of that number, she said 302 had been placed in jobs as of noon Thursday, September 15.

The staff was initially overwhelmed in the days following the arrival of thousands of evacuees into the Shreveport area -- hence, the need to ask fellow Goodwill staff to come down and help, Firor said. But, now, the positive effects of their experience are becoming apparent.

“We’re helping people on a daily basis get connected with work,” Firor said. “We’ve been able to tell people our story over and over. We’re really truly doing our mission work,” she added, referring to the mission of Goodwill to provide employment and training for people who are disadvantaged or have disabilities.

After initially having a presence at the three shelters in the Shreveport-Bossier City area, Goodwill is now working out of two sites: the Social Services Center at Hirsch Coliseum, which will soon be home to all the remaining evacuees in the area, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Recovery Center.

At both sites, Goodwill is the only charity on the premises and the sole provider of job placement services -- a fact Firor attributes to the Goodwill’s early and steadfast presence at area shelters.

In fact, the Goodwill had already proven to be an effective coordinator of job placement services to the evacuees. On September 6, the Goodwill co-sponsored a job fair with the City and the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, which drew nearly 1,000 storm evacuees and about 100 employers. And, just a week later, the Goodwill sponsored a job search workshop co-sponsored with the United Way of Northwest Louisiana.

Janice Dewey, Director of Career Services for Goodwill Industries of Delaware and Delaware County (Wilmington), is one of four Goodwill professionals who came down on September 12 to help her Shreveport counterparts with job placement services. She described the Shreveport workforce development staff as giving “200 percent.”

“Hearing stories of people has had the biggest impact,” said Dewey, tearing up. “Just to hear them say ‘thank you’ -- it’s what Goodwill is about.”

Carl Blackburn, a 46-year-old evacuee from New Orleans, was one of those people. He first encountered Bass in Bossier City, where she helped him get a pair of glasses, found him a job at a doughnut shop, and secured a bicycle to get him there. When he was transferred to the Hirsch Coliseum in Shreveport, he reunited with the Goodwill staff and is confident they can find him another job.

“[Goodwill’s help] was right on time for me,” Blackburn said. “That’s why I’m back on it.”

In the short term, Firor said the Goodwill plans to continue providing job placement services until the shelter closes around mid-October, although the number of people staffing the sites will shrink. In the meantime, she said several foundations from both in and out of state have given the Goodwill $130,000 in funding, which enabled the hiring of two former New Orleans Goodwill staff members and will permit her to hire one other person.

But the Goodwill expects to be helping evacuees over the long haul, recognizing that aid will not be needed for just one more week or month, but for years to come.

“We know we’ll continue to serve storm evacuees,” Bass said. “And we’re still serving our existing clients.”

Manny Kiesser, an American Red Cross volunteer coordinating services at the Social Services Center, knows very well what the Goodwill staff is capable of. Of all the agencies that are represented at the center, “they’re the biggest entity here that is really making things work,”

What the Goodwill brings to the table is its expertise working with people, particularly in the area of case management, he said.

“It‘s that personal transaction happening across the table that will turn all this [bureaucracy] into humanity,” Kiesser said.