Student from Voorheesville fled Hurricane Katrina

A member of St. Matthew's parish in Voorheesville who is dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana is sending Catholics here a simple message: "Constantly pray, and donate what you can."

Until August 28, Allison Pofit was a student at Tulane University in New Orleans, just starting her junior year.

Her parents, Joseph and Martha Pofit, both of whom work for Catholic Charities of the Albany Diocese, listened to her excitement that her sorority was about to welcome new members and that she had moved with several friends into a new apartment on Broadway, right near her college.

Get out now

Then the English/urban sociology major and her roommates got a call from a friend's father, advising them to evacuate before the hurricane.

Packing a week's worth of clothing and necessities, the students piled into a car and headed for Houston, Texas. For the time being, that week's supplies are all Ms. Pofit has. She believes that the rest of her belongings are safe but hasn't been able to reach her apartment in New Orleans since the hurricane hit August 29.

"I feel really lucky; I'm fine down here," she told The Evangelist. "But I have a lot of friends who lost their houses, lost pets. One of my friends, the roof of his house came off. His family is torn apart by this."

Return, armed

Three days after the storm, Ms. Pofit attempted to return to her apartment. At that point, the National Guard was allowing residents into the city if they had trucks -- but highly recommending they arm themselves, as well.

The 19-year-old student, who said she has never touched a gun, found herself riding in a truck with two armed male friends and being asked by soldiers if she knew how to fire a rifle.

"There were five or six checkpoints," Ms. Pofit recalled. "We got almost to the university and hit some flooding; we couldn't get to the house. It was horrible: I could see my house, my front porch, but it wasn't worth risking my health and safety to get there."

The students turned back. On their way in and out, they passed smashed storefronts, caravans of buses evacuating survivors from the Superdome, trucks carrying Porta-Potties and a sight that brought Ms. Pofit to tears: an arriving truck entirely filled with body bags.

"I've never seen anything like it," she said.

Back in school

Ms. Pofit has now turned her efforts to enrolling at Louisiana State University, which is taking in displaced students, and finding housing in Baton Rouge. She has already begun attending classes and is trying to catch up with LSU students who started their school year two weeks ahead of Tulane.

But she said the real reason she's staying in Louisiana is to help with relief efforts. She has already applied with several organizations to volunteer wherever she's needed and is waiting for replies.

"New Orleans is a very unique place; it's really a home away from home for Tulane students," she explained. "It's big and small at the same time."

Impressions

In her time at Tulane, Ms. Pofit has grown so attached to the city that she doesn't want to come back to the Albany Diocese.

She believes residents of the Gulf Coast are friendlier, have stronger ties to their hometowns and possess an "ingrown resilience that you don't see in many communities any more."

In fact, at a time when other states are eager to welcome relocating hurricane survivors, Ms. Pofit hopes the survivors choose to remain down south. The people she knows, she said, "aren't afraid of the future; they're focused on rebuilding. This is their culture, their way of life. I couldn't really see it existing elsewhere."

'Good stuff'

The student doesn't think enough of the "good stuff" -- acts of kindness to one's neighbor -- is being reported by the media. She has seen families donate houses, cars, vacations and food to evacuees.

"I really have seen people step up and treat each other as human beings," she noted.

In Baton Rouge, "I've been so impressed with the outpouring of help. There are people who just take in homeless people off the street or cook someone dinner. I had a lady down the street say to me, 'You need some extra money?' That's really heartening."

Hopes

As a student of sociology, Ms. Pofit also hopes that a disaster of this magnitude in the U.S., affecting so many people who were already living in poverty, will spur the country to ensure that hurricane survivors achieve a higher standard of living than they once had.

"Poverty in the south is very different from the north; it's very out in the open," she noted, adding: "I hope people at home grasp exactly how serious this is."

In addition to large cities like New Orleans, "a lot of small communities were really decimated, too. This could be Voorheesville; this could be Bethlehem; this could be Guilderland. It really could be any of us. How would we feel? Where would we go?"

Plans

Ironically, Ms. Pofit herself was planning to study abroad during the spring semester -- in Ghana, where she still hopes to go if the program in which she was participating still exists.

In the meantime, she described the scene in Baton Rouge, where she said the population has swelled enormously and homeless evacuees fill the streets, in the hope that people in the Albany Diocese keep the enormity of the crisis in their minds.

"Don't forget too soon," she requested.

(Martha Pofit, Allison's mother, is director of public policy for Albany diocesan Catholic Charities. She called her daughter "one lucky girl" to have escaped the hurricane and flood waters safely, and said her own concern in the immediate aftermath of the disaster outweighed Allison's: "We [in New York] understood the situation better than they did, because there was no communication" on the Gulf Coast.)

(9/15/05) [[In-content Ad]]