9/7/2005 1:16:00 PM Locals respond to Katrina aftermath
Jack Dwier, playing along with the rest of the Dwier Family Band, plucks away at his mandolin during a concert Monday at Fort Worden State Park to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. – Photo by Steven J. Barry
After reading online news reports last week, Molly Fahrenschon was struck by the horrific devastation in New Orleans. She found that she couldn't sit still; she had to do something.
Fahrenschon called her friend Jason Green, and in five hours he helped her secure enough resources to hold a benefit concert at Fort Worden State Park, complete with catering and a beer garden.
Hundreds of people showed up to watch some of the 32 bands that signed up to play.
They are among countless Jefferson County residents who have found themselves itching with the desire to help the Gulf Coast hurricane victims. People began to organize those scattered desires late last week, and now several local efforts are in full swing.
A small group of volunteers plan to leave Sept. 7 on a bus powered by biodiesel and vegetable oil to head to Mobile, Ala. There they will figure out how they can best incorporate themselves into the relief effort. The bus, which belongs to New Old Time Chautauqua (NOTC), can be used to help shuttle relief workers and evacuees and could bring some refugees back to the Pacific Northwest.
"We're basically going to serve," said Joannie Murayama, vice president of NOTC, a community outreach organization.
Jordan Smith and her sister-in-law Erin McNamara were among the first to start organizing the effort in Port Townsend last week. Smith was struck by TV news reports about Hurricane Katrina's wake and immediately called McNamara to brainstorm. Eventually the two got in touch with the local Red Cross chapter and put together an informational meeting Sunday night at the Port Townsend Community Center.
"I can't watch that in good conscience and just sit on my butt and not do anything," Smith said Sept. 2.
Ayers being helped
Smith and McNamara are now leading the charge to provide aid for the family of William and Kim Ayers, former Port Townsend residents who lost everything after New Orleans flooded. The Ayers, who have daughters ages 12 and 15, were able to rent a car and are on their way back to the Pacific Northwest.
Smith said William was looking for jobs near Port Townsend on the Internet on Saturday when he found her phone number listed in a Leader article. He called her, asking if there was something she could do to help the Ayers.
"I told him, 'Just get here and we will take care of you,'" Smith said.
She said the Ayers are on the road and should pull into Port Townsend by Sept. 8.
She and McNamara established an account for the family at Quimper Community Credit Union, as well as a second account to help other families that might need to relocate here. That account is under the name of an organization they just established called the Port Townsend Katrina Relocation Committee.
American Marine Bank, with local branches in Port Ludlow and Port Townsend, was also quick to establish an account to collect donations for the Red Cross.
Storm hits home
While the relief effort mounts here, others in Port Townsend are still feeling the storm's effects.
Ken McBride, a Port Townsend man who owned an antique shop in the French Quarter in New Orleans for 20 years, finds reports of the tragedy difficult to watch.
"You take a place that my wife grew up in and lived in all her life, and now it's gone. It's unimaginable," McBride said.
Some of his friends were forced to leave behind businesses they had spent decades building.
"You lock the door and you leave it, and it's everything you've worked for all your life and you don't know what's going to be there when you get back," McBride said.
So far as he knows, all of his friends and family made it out. But he said they still haven't made contact with one of his wife Cindy's brothers.
"His house is pretty well gone, and we feel that he's OK, but we don't know," McBride said.
McBride said he was frustrated by the reports of looting. He is worried that images of hoodlums pilfering abandoned homes will give the country the impression that New Orleans is a city of thieves, when in reality it is a place rich with unique culture.
He is angered by the federal government's response.
"The relief effort has been commendable to a very short degree," he said. "I think it's deplorable how slow things have gone to get help to those people."
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