Hurricane Katrina – One Year Later
A look at how our Fellowship has survived in the aftermath of calamity with unity, resolve, determination and, most importantly, by staying sober!

 
  A year after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, A.A. groups are recovering in ways that reflect how the region in general is shaking off the effects of the storm. Some A.A. groups rebounded quickly. For others, it’s been slower. Some meeting places were destroyed, some damaged to the point where they are still not available.
  Attendance at A.A. meetings in New Orleans is down due tot he drop in the city’s population. Some groups have merged and some are sharing meeting places. At some meetings, according to A.A. members in the region, people still talk about little other than the fallout from the storm. At other meetings, it’s back to A.A. as usual – though that may be relative.
  “Lots down here is back to a state of normal, though now we’ve got new definition of normal.. We are learning to live in this world,” says Howard L., Southeast Regional trustee.
  In the aftermath of the storm, which hit Aug. 29, a group called the Little Yellow House, in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, met in the parking lot outside its normal meeting hall, which lost its roof in the storm. “Since there was no cover from the shade, the group’s noon-time meeting was canceled. So was its 8 p.m. meeting, because of the curfew,” say Howard. Now that group is back in its original meeting place with its previous meeting schedule.
  “Along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi,” says Howard, “a lot of areas that looked devastated in December look good now. But where they have to, people are making compromises, they’re adjusting, adapting.”
  Glenn H., the delegate from Mississippi, says, “the devastation was so widespread, cut such a wide swath, that it was beyond belief. There were towns along the coast, like Waveland, that were essentially wiped out. A storm surge of 26 feet or so came in and took everything.
  “It’s all going to come back, but it will take time. And A.A. will be there.”
  He notes that the Gratitude Round-Up, which is the main event for the South Mississippi Intergroup, came off as planned at the Long Beach Clubhouse the weekend after Thanksgiving last year. “There was surprisingly goo attendance, something like 100 [down from the usual 600 - 700]. I applaud the people for their efforts. I’m not sure I would have been able to do it so soon after the storm.”
  New Orleans had a population of half a million people when the storm hit. That dropped to 100,000 in the storm’s aftermath, and now is back to something over 200,000. Three of the city’s five parishes sustained major damage and recovery has been slowed by the dimensions of the rebuilding effort.
  “Something as simple as roof shingles have been in short supply, not to mention roofers,” says Don M., the delegate from Louisiana, who was able to move back into his house only last April.
  “As people came back, the groups came back, but a lot of places were destroyed,” says Don, “and some areas are still in bad shape. Our Monday night group is still not back; the church where we met got pretty banged up.”   The Boulevard Club, a well-known meeting place, was under eight feet of water, according to Don. “It was early November before people could return to it. Then they had to shovel a few feet of muck. I saw one volunteer wearing a full hazard suit, while another was in shorts and a flannel shirt and eating a jelly donut.”
  Many groups around the country sent A.A. literature to the New Orleans Central Office. “We had more than we knew what to do with,” Don said. “We had offers of donations of funds, which we turned down. The central office did accept offers of money from A.A. members, but at the end of the year they make a donation of excess money to G.S.O. and the Area Assembly.”
  A couple of weeks after the storm the office rented a room in a major hotel on Canal Street and made it available to A.A. groups for meetings.
  As Greg H., who was chairman of the New Orleans Central Office Service Board at the time, remembers it, “at that point, to our knowledge, there were no meetings being held in New Orleans. There was discussion about the costs involved and then we decided to go ahead and rent a conference room. For the next six weeks, we had A.A. meetings there every day at noon and 6 p.m.”
  According to Greg, “a good number of groups in New Orleans – probably half – were up and running within a couple of months of the storm, and since then it’s been a slow, a trickle even. I know of one meeting that just came back last week. Some probably will never come back.”
  Nevertheless, as an indication of progress among A.A. in New Orleans and the surrounding areas, three big A.A. events have come off this year: the International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous (ICYPAA) Meeting, the Big Deep South Convention, and the 48th Annual Louisiana State
Convention, which took place in Slidell, about 30 miles outside New Orleans.   “Even as late as March the organizers didn’t know if there would be facilities for these events. You can’t host big events like these in a parking lot, the way you can hold a meeting there,” says Greg.
  Overall, though, he calls the last year “a time of great spiritual growth. If I just stay out of the way, things are taking care of themselves.”
  The chairman of this year’s Big Deep South Convention, Jimmy H., says attendance dropped to 500 for the three-day event in June, from the usual 800. The Convention has been meeting for 38 years. “About three months before the Convention, we found out the hotel where we normally meet had been damaged, and was not going to be ready. Some were for canceling the event, but we found a high school gym to hold it, which worked out better in some ways. The kitchen facilities were right next to the main meeting space, unlike in the hotel, and so it made our Cajun hospitality easier.”
  Jimmy says the meeting space rented by the New Orleans Central Office held at the hotel on Canal Street “became my interim group.”
  “I’m a homebuilder, and nine of 11 homes I had under construction were damaged. At the same time, I was working on my own residence. I was driving 80 miles each way every day from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. But I couldn’t wait for it to be 5 p.m. so I could stop what I was doing and head over to the hotel to make coffee for the 6 p.m. meeting. The hotel didn’t even have potable water at first, so I’d bring along a gallon of distilled water.
  “You know, though, reflection on it, it shows me that God runs A.A. If we didn’t worry about anything and just went out and helped drunks, the rest of our lives just fell into place." via, box 459

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My apologies for all the typos in September’s Newsletter in regards to the Intergroup minutes. One more time, I get to learn there is no substitute for doing a good job. One of most glaring errors was the date of the meeting. It should have read, “August 19, 2006.” Thank you for pointing that out to me. I will try in the future to be more diligent. Betty B., Editor and Secretary