Battered by the Storm

Nov. 30, 2005

Jessica Strouse barely knew what hit her as Hurricane Katrina howled over the rooftops of her house in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, just 45 minutes from the Gulf Coast.  
“I was in a car accident two weeks before the hurricane, so I was only out of the hospital a few days when it hit,” she recalls.  “I was actually at home with trees falling on the house, but I slept through it because I was on so much pain medication.”
A different kind of pain occupies Jessica now: the 25-year-old native of Manistee County has made her way home from the devastation of the Gulf Coast, but has serious health and financial problems along with the fact that her possessions and dreams of college have been literally blown away by Katrina.  Today, she’s living on borrowed time in an apartment complex catering to the elderly, disabled and low income persons on the south side of  Traverse City, with no help expected from FEMA and getting the run-around from the State.
Her 1996 Chevy Beretta is a wreck. Her Medicaid benefits are a mess, making it difficult to find a doctor who’ll help with her head injury and leg in need of surgery.  She doesn’t know how she’ll pay her rent.  There’s a lot on the plate of a young woman who faces the world with a stoic smile.
“It’s been quite a challenge to get things taken care of,” she says.

STORM HITS
Strouse grew up in the Beulah-Honor area and graduated from Benzie High School in 1998.  She moved south planning to establish residency in order to attend either community college or Southern Mississippi University.  For the past two years, she lived in Hattiesburg, a pleasant community set amid the forests of southern Mississippi.  Living with three roommates, her goal was to become a teacher or surgical tech.
Then came her accident.
“I fractured my ankle and tore the tendons and cartilage in my knee.  I broke my nose and burned my face and had a head injury,” she says.  “I still need surgery.  So this whole ordeal with the hurricane just made it worse trying to pack and leave in excruciating pain.”
And an ordeal it was.  “People don’t even think of what it was like inland, but we had 125-miles-per-hour sustained winds where we were living.  People think mostly about what happened to New Orleans, but if you look at the coast of Mississippi, it was all wiped out.”
It was pandemonium in the days that followed. 
“It took us four days to get out of our house.  We had  two trees on it and two parts of the roof were smashed.  We couldn’t even get out of our driveway because of the downed power lines.  They were lying on the cars outside and we didn’t know if they were live or not.
“But we had a gas leak and couldn’t take it anymore,” she continues.  “It was 105 degrees in the house and you couldn’t even bathe because you had to save the water.”

ONE AT A TIME
   Strouse and her roommates had filled a bathtub with water and had a freezer full of food.  But the water was undrinkable and their food started going bad.  “We couldn’t get any help from FEMA because we rented instead of owned,” she notes.  “We lost $300 in food.”  They ended up holding a huge barbecue and passing out the cooked meat before it spoiled.
Their small town swelled with 30,000 refugees and bumper-to-bumper traffic even at midnight in the aftermath of the storm.  Gas fires were everywhere due to leaking pipes and mains -- some fires set off by smokers or people grilling their food.
“I have to have electricity because I have asthma real bad and need a breathing machine,” Strouse says. “But the heat was really bad, causing my asthma to increase.  I couldn’t afford a generator, so I only had my inhaler to rely on.”
People everywhere were sharing food, but also scrambling to survive.
“You’d have to wait three hours in line at Walgreen’s just to get water.  They’d let one person in at a time and only take cash.  Home Depot and Lowe’s were the same way -- they’d let one person in and follow them around by flashlight.”

MOVING NORTH
Unable to get help from FEMA, Strouse drove to Little Rock, Arkansas with her roommate.  There, someone arranged for her to fly to Detroit on donated flight vouchers.  Left behind was her furniture and most of her possessions.
Since returning north, life has been catch-as-catch-can.  She found a part-time job at Rite-Aide as a pharmacy clerk, but it’s part-time, and her leg injuries make it difficult to stand for long.  Michigan’s Department of Human Services helped her locate her apartment and paid the security deposit, but promises to pay six-to-nine months rent while she gets on her feet have gone by the wayside. 
“They’ve only paid for three days in October, November and December,” she says of the department.  “They were supposed to give me more help, but I haven’t heard anything and it’s hard to get ahold of anyone there.  I understand they’re busy, but it’s frustrating me.”
But she has also received help from unexpected sources, including the Red Cross and Kim Hall, a Traverse City woman who pitched in to help hurricane victims.
“Kim Hall has been wonderful,” she says.  “She took on these families and got a pole barn and started taking donations.  I wouldn’t have the things I do now without her.”
That includes a full-size bed and dresser donated by the owner of The Bedroom Company in Traverse City.  And Rent-A-Center lent her the use of the furniture in her apartment until January.   She stayed at a motel in Benzie for a month as the guest of a former teacher.

LOOKING AHEAD
There are families and individuals from the Gulf area scattered throughout Northern Michigan, trying to rebuild their lives.  Strouse knows of five refugee families living just down the way from her apartment.  They are part of a reported 250,000 persons from New Orleans alone who have been dispersed to temporary homes across the United States.
Strouse has appealed to FEMA, but never followed up on her request and apparently got lost in the shuffle.  In the meantime, she’s getting help from her mother and a family friend and is appealing to local agencies.  
Her car is a special concern.  The ‘96 Chevy Beretta needs $750 in repairs to fix an ignition module, sensor equipment, an intake gasket and a leaky radiator.  Basically, she needs a new car.
“Right now I don’t even care if I have furniture come January if I can get my car fixed because I really need it to get to work.  I can get beanbags or sit on the floor,” she says.
How is she bearing up through all this?  How does she manage to smile, recounting such terrible things?
“I have my moments,” she says, her face falling into reflection.  “I’m pretty private about that.  You can laugh about it or you can cry, but crying doesn’t get you anywhere.  I can mope or pull up my bootstraps and kick it.”
  
Persons interested in assisting Jessica Strouse can reach her cell phone at 601-467-9108.