Silver Lining in a Hurricane
UMCOR still touching lives, 10 years after deciding to stay
By Jennifer Boquet, The Daily Iberian, LA, 2002
Reprinted with permission
BALDWIN—When Hurricane Andrew swept across Louisiana in 1992, relief supplies flooded into the Teche area. Ten years later, the generosity from that one disaster has helped thousands of people around the world.
"If there is a sliver lining to Hurricane Andrew and the disaster and destruction it caused, it's the advent of the UMCOR Sager Brown facility," Baldwin Mayor Wayne Breaux said.
It was soon after Hurricane Andrew hit the United Methodist Committee on Relief came to the Teche area to collect supplies and funds for emergency relief.
They set up at the Sager Brown School in Baldwin, a former orphanage and elite school for African American children which had been vacant since 1978.
The dormitories provided housing for about 50 families left homeless after the storm, said Glenn Druilhet, who started volunteering in September of 1992 and is now UMCOR depot manager.
"We were doing housing rehab about Hurricane Andrew. That's how I got involved. I had to do a lot of casework as people came for assistance," she said.
Bettye Foulcard, business manager, saw a help wanted ad in November of 1992.
"By that time, we were getting a lot of supplies," she said. "There were no desks when I got here.
"We used the gymnasium to store donated building supplies."
Donated food was stored in the back of an office, Druilhet said.
Volunteers also traveled to the Teche Area to assist residents.
"People from all over the U.S. , through their generosity, came to help," Foulcard said. "People have come every year since then."
UMCOR officials realized the location - providing easy access to road, rail and water transportation - was perfect to coordinate response efforts for other disasters.
UMCOR set up permanently at the Sager-Brown facility. In the early 1990's, the 48,000 square foot UMCOR depot was built to collect and store relief supplies.
It is the only depot UMCOR has in the United States .
All relief supplies come in the form of donations. The work is done by volunteers.
Almost 2,000 volunteers of all religions came to Baldwin last year from throughout the nation and the world.
Those volunteers Help assemble the many hygiene, flood and school kits UMCOR distributes.
In addition to the kits, supplies line the tall shelves in the warehouse.
Blankets which may become tents in Bosnia take up one section. Medical equipment waits in a back corner to become part of a clinic in Africa .
"The majority of what we do goes out internationally," Druilhet said. "Of course, if there is a disaster in the United States we respond."
That response must be fast. Within three hours of receiving the call for help, supplies must be loaded into containers as large as 40-feet and one their way to the needy area.
"We never see any of the people we ship to, but it doesn't matter," Druilhet said. "They need it."
A gift shop sells items which are handmade in economically poor countries, and the money made is sent back.
However, true to its original mission, several volunteers still work in Baldwin and the surrounding areas.
"We still do housing rehab, and the volunteers go in and do the work," Druilhet said.
UMCOR Sager Brown also provides parenting and computer classes, adopts a local school and distributes food to senior and the needy.
