Stories of help, hope in Houston

Passionist Father Alex Steinmiller normally spends his days running a retreat house in Houston. But in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, his ministry took him to the Astrodome and the Reliant Center, offering everything from his help serving breakfast to his pastoral care for people who stopped there after the storm, on their way to wherever they would go next.

Steinmiller, a Chicago native, said people from the New Orleans area completely filled not only the Astrodome but also the Reliant Center and the Brown Convention Center, with more than 32,000 housed temporarily during the week between Sept. 2 and 9.

“They’ve created a city,” Steinmiller said in a Sept. 9 telephone call. “It’s got everything, from ATM machines to a place for pets to places for kids to play.”

“It’s very transient,” he said. “You can be switched from one building to another overnight. … People want to get to something permanent. Some of them are realizing that there’s nothing back in New Orleans for them, no job, no home.”

Steinmiller said he was struck by the number of volunteers who traveled from other parts of the country to help—the woman who checked him in his first day was from Chicago—and by the care taken to preserve the dignity of the people living in the shelters to the extent possible.

“The FEMA people I’ve seen here have been very good, very professional, very humane,” he said. “They have a meeting every morning and remind everyone that these people are to be called ‘residents’ or ‘guests.’”

The first day he walked around the Astrodome, he said, he found people set up “kind of in tribes” with those from the same neighborhoods back home near one another in the stadium.

“Imagine Soldier Field set up with 20,000 people sleeping on the turf and in the seats,” he said. “There are no curtains, no privacy. You are right there, next to a crying baby or a guy who snores a lot. You are at the beck and call of the people who are serving you.”

The faces of people—some grief-stricken, some lost, all tired—contrasted with the bright clothing that the government provided, which had been confiscated from designer pirates.

“As I looked around, I was reminded of a family reunion, because everyone’s wearing these designer jeans and bright shirts,” he said, “but you could tell they were very need,. There were also some grieving people, who knew they lost loved ones.”

Many of them were needy before the hurricane, said Steinmiller, who worked for five years with at-risk youth in the Louisiana city.