It has been three months since Hurricane Isaac flooded most of St. John the Baptist Parish and residents are still in dire need of outside help. Entire neighborhoods still have piles of debris at the edge of driveways, and some homes have to be rebuilt from scratch.
A saving grace for residents of LaPlace during Hurricane Isaac was the New Wine Fellowship Church on Airline Highway. Now the church plays temporary home to the Long Term Volunteer Recovery Center (LTVRC). Here, people can come and be housed during their stay in LaPlace while they help with rebuilding efforts, and anyone willing to help is welcome.
“We are trying to reach out to people in the parish, which is hard to do because lots of families were affected by Isaac,” said Brenda Young, volunteer coordinator for the LTVRC. “A lot of residents no longer have family here, which is why we are also trying to reach out to other places, and churches, and colleges to appeal to these people to come out and restore these homes.”
Since the storm, many of the residents’ lives have been turned upside down. According to Young, not everyone had flood insurance and families are scattered all over now.
“We’ve had floods before, but never the amount of water that we got from Isaac,” says Young.  “We have got a first-hand experience of what people in New Orleans went through with Katrina.”
Pastor Neil Bernard of New Wine Fellowship Church is the chairman of the executive committee of the LTVRC, and he has allowed his church to be home to the recovery center.
Adult age volunteers are needed for rebuilding homes and picking up debris. It is a hard, but extremely rewarding job and volunteers will even have a place to sleep at night.
“We are trying to appeal to as many colleges as we can. I am a student myself,” said Young. “Also skilled people, people who know how to do roofing and drywall work.”
Volunteers will help with a wide range of duties including answering phones in the center, being out in the field working on homes or preparing meals for volunteers.
“We house the volunteers and feed them,” Young said. “We give them three meals a day, starting at 6 a.m. We’ve got WiFi and a TV for them to watch and showers.”
All of what the LTVRC offers is a small thanks to the volunteers for their efforts. It is only by doing can the word spread.
“We want [volunteers] comfortable so they can spread the word about our recovery center,” Young said. “We want to treat them good so it can spread by word of mouth.”
If anyone wishes to donate time, skills and efforts, please contact Brenda Young at 985-359-0254.