Community organizations step up in Gulf South winter storm recovery: ‘The need is so big’

Local, state and federal governments are responding to needs as they can, but in many cases, affected areas need a much more immediate response. 

In Oxford, the community has come together to take care of those needs — not just while waiting for other responders, but also fill persistent gaps.

Usually, the Oxford Community Market, a food access nonprofit, hosts a weekly farmers’ market to give Oxford and Lafayette County residents access to local, fresh food. 

But in the aftermath of the storm, the nonprofit — along with dozens of other local groups — is also at the forefront of getting people basic necessities to get by. 

“We are not an organization: we are simply many, many organizations,” said Betsy Chapman, Oxford Community Market’s director. “Churches, community groups — like from the garden club ladies to the fire department.”

Immediately after the storm, Chapman made sure she and her mom were OK. Then, she sprang into action to check on her community. 

“I just knew that the people I usually work with in the community were probably thinking the same thing,” she said. “They were probably sitting there wondering, ‘I'm OK right now: what are we gonna do to help?’”

So, she sent off a text on January 27 to some other nonprofits in the area to see what they could do to help. 

“All of our community partners, all of our churches, we invited everybody,” she said. “And we called ourselves the ‘Second Responders.’”

So far, the Lafayette-Oxford-University Second Responders have set up over a dozen distribution sites at churches, fire stations and other community centers. 

And they’re working to get donations out to people who are still without power, farther away from the city of Oxford. 

They’ve handed out food and hygiene kits — even generators donated from a few local churches, like Pine Lake Church and heaters from Community Church. 

Over 10,000 meals from Chick-fil-A and Convoy of Hope have been distributed at 10 of their sites. They’ve also delivered and served thousands of hot meals, or served them at their sites and the Oxford Community Market.

In total, it’s an estimated over 15,000 hot meals served since they started in late January. That’s in addition to helping get out thousands of other hygiene and food kits from charities and churches. 

Chapman said that during what would have been their first farmers' market of the season, they additionally gave out warm meals. What started as a pot of soup turned into an even bigger effort with the help of other local organizations, like More than a Meal. 

As relief and recovery efforts move forward, Chapman said the response from the community has been staggering. 

“People wept because this is the first time someone got out to them,” Chapman said. “That's not the fault of anyone; it's just that the need is so big.”

Chapman has had help from Laura Martin, who works at the University of Mississippi, specializing in public service and community engagement. 

She already knew many of the nonprofits in the area and the work they were doing, so she helped send off those initial messages to get people connected. 

“We thought it was going to be 20 or 30 people,” Martin said. “We had 80 people in the room, 60 people on Zoom.” 

While the organizing is recent, Martin said what’s made this mutual aid operation work is that it’s held up by organizations already serving their community. 

“Once the disaster declarations have an end date, we are going to see the withdrawal of these international and national relief agencies,” she said. “We're going to see the withdrawal of state and federal resources.

“The folks on the ground, the ones who are here — who have always been here — are the ones who are going to continue picking up the pieces.”

Mississippi was hardest hit by the storm, with a peak of 180,000 power outages. 

But northern Louisiana got its share of damage as well, peaking at over 125,000 homes and businesses without power. 

“We were right at 300 work order requests in the Monroe area,” said Stan Statham, state director for the Louisiana Baptist Disaster Relief, listing their requests as of the first week in February. “I believe we were a little over 600 in the Bell High area north to Lake Providence.”

Statham said his group’s priorities have been clearing trees off houses, which have been the majority of requests.

But, they’ve been able to additionally adapt to new needs as they pop up. 

“Two different locations, we were contacted, and they had set up a place for electrical linemen to sleep overnight, but they didn't have shower facilities,” said Statham. “We were able to bring a shower trailer to those two locations to help those linemen, really out there on the front line, working hard, long hours every day.”

Being able to pivot has been crucial in a storm of this severity. 

“I really think both states got caught off guard,” said Brian Trascher, vice president of the United Cajun Navy. “It's always like when you know something's coming, you just don't know how exactly how bad it's going to be.”

He said slowly, but surely, folks are getting back on their feet. 

“We can stick around or come back if we need to, but it’s getting close to that point, in Mississippi and Louisiana, where they're kind of starting to take over for themselves,” he said.

The Cajun Navy is a volunteer organization that helps with natural disasters — everything from getting out in Mississippi during the initial recovery phase of this storm, to helping out during Los Angeles’s fires last year. 

This time, they actually started with recovery in Oxford. Trascher said they know a lot of people in Louisiana whose kids are going to Ole Miss, and they were asking the Cajun Navy to check in on those students. 

Trascher described their initial work, after its founding post-Hurricane Katrina, similarly to how the Second Responders are starting now. 

He said that over the last few years, they’ve gotten to a good place in working with local officials when their agencies get overwhelmed or have to wait before deploying resources. 

For residents in Louisiana and Mississippi, that can make all the difference. 

“We only have one speed: and it's go,” Trascher said. “We know what it’s like to be stuck and feeling hopeless, and it doesn’t feel like anybody's coming, and there's stuff that you need right away.”

Chapman knows how that feels, with the additional newness to everything the Second Responders have been doing. 

“This is something we have never experienced: we don't know what the recovery or the response is really supposed to look like,” she said. “We just know that we have a role to fill as community organizations and churches. We're able to, and we'll do that until it's not needed.”

This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.