By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Leslie Hagan walked along the beach in what used to be Waveland, Miss.

Soon, she came across some cloth. When she recognized it as a bathrobe, she started crying.

“I couldn’t help myself,” said Hagan, 52, of Auburn. She wondered whether someone had been wearing it and died in the storm.

Waveland, a Gulf Coast town about midway between New Orleans and Gulfport, used to be home to more than 6,000 people. It took a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina.

Hagan was there to view the damage and rendezvous with another team of Red Cross volunteers, to see if they needed help.

Waveland had been largely leveled.

Hagan’s Red Cross team had it easy by comparison. They were housed in a Baptist Church hall in Natchez, roughly 200 miles away.

Caring for 105

The seven people in her group – along with scores of church members – were helping to care for 105 people staying at the hall. Those folks, all from New Orleans, had made their way to the hall by various means. Some, the luckier ones, had fled in their own vehicles, able to bring a few belongings. Others had been evacuated by the military days after Katrina ravaged the city and left it inundated by floodwaters.

Hagan and other Red Cross volunteers helped the evacuees with food and clothing, lodging and medical needs. Those who had lost everything but their lives wept or voiced anger over TV news updates.

Churchgoers, along with Red Cross volunteers, offered encouragement, Hagan said.

“That’s your house,” the pastor, Brother Bill, told refugees of their rooms. “This is the town,” he added, of the hall itself.

Each night, Hagan said, Brother Bill led a town meeting where he’d provide the latest information that he could get to the folks craving word from home. He’d also listen to problems and go about solving them, and review the rules that everyone was expected to follow.

“He ran a tight ship,” Hagan said, but also a generous one where no one went without necessities.

3-week tour

Hagan spent three weeks helping at the church. She and Marsha Walsh, an Otisfield volunteer, returned to Maine over the weekend.

Doug Hoyt, director of the United Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross, said three more chapter volunteers are due back in the Twin Cities any day now. More will follow as others head south to help Katrina’s victims. Eleven area people are waiting for training, he noted.

Hagan became a Red Cross disaster volunteer after seeing others help during the Oklahoma City bombing.

“This is what I need to do,” she said. “When you see these people who are hurting and in shock, I need to help.”

She said she called Hoyt on the day Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, volunteering to do whatever she could. Within days she was on her way to Natchez.

That area escaped the brunt of Katrina, she noted, but areas around it were clobbered by tornadoes spawned by the hurricane. She saw three distinct tornado paths during the time she was there, and was told of others.

Folks staying in the shelter had seen much worse, she said. They were grateful to be alive, and grateful for anything people offered, from used clothes and furniture to a place to live.

Ready to return

With the help of the local church members, many were able to find jobs and apartments, Hagan said. Nearly all planned to stay in the Natchez and Jackson areas rather than return to New Orleans.

Most also had been able to reconnect with missing family members and pets, which Hagan said left their owners with tears of joy and big smiles. Now she’s thinking about going to New Orleans herself to help with continuing animal rescue efforts.

She said she would be among the first to volunteer again if needed. “People are just so grateful for anything you do for them.”