AFT mobilizes to assist Gulf Coast members

In the path of total destruction

It’s like a treasure hunt—you keep going back, looking for more," says AFT member Marla Mauffray of post-Hurricane Katrina expeditions to her Long Beach, Miss., beachfront neighborhood.

Two crystal crosses are among the few relics that Mauffray, a fourth-grade teacher at Thomas L. Reeves Elementary School and a member of the Long Beach Federation of Teachers, has recovered from her home—her neighborhood, actually. "Our stuff is not even on our property," she says. "It’s to the north, the east, the west—and probably the south."

Like many coastal homes, Mauffray’s house was reduced to a slab of concrete by Hurricane Katrina’s winds, which seemed to devour most of the family’s belongings. Only some dishes, a couple of pieces of jewelry and those treasured crosses from her daughters’ baptisms were found nearby.

The railroad tracks in Long Beach, a community of nearly 20,000 residents sandwiched between Pass Christian and Gulfport, separate the beachfront developments from the town. "Pretty much everything south of the railroad is not livable," says Mauffray, whose home was south of the tracks—about 2,000 feet from the beach.

Although her family—husband Bobby and daughters Emma and Ryann—have lost their house and nearly all their possessions, they have a roof over their heads, jobs and paychecks. Although they have not received the insurance company’s determination, Mauffray says they don’t have plans to rebuild—nor do they plan to leave the area.

"I’ve been a lifelong resident of Long Beach and always will be—just north of the railroad tracks now.

"Knowing that I can never go back to that house" is difficult, she says. "We brought both of our children home from the hospital to that house."

Did this really happen? It was a question that would haunt New Orleans teacher and AFT member Judy Ogle each waking morning in early fall.

Day after day, the details would have to sink in yet again—the events that had driven her from her now uninhabitable Eighth Ward house in the Crescent City and rewarding career in the city’s public schools to unemployment and an indefinite stay in a relative’s bedroom in Stafford, Tex.

There was the hurried evacuation of her family two days before Katrina hit. There was the short hitch in a few Texas motels before Ogle and four other brothers and sisters—all educators from New Orleans and AFT members—would settle in to begin their lives again at the home of their youngest brother. There was the hope and heartbreak of media announcements about New Orleans schools: first that they would be reopened as quickly as possible, then that they would be closed indefinitely as the extent of destruction became known.

And then there’s the mail. One of her sisters got word in October that the mortgage company was only giving them until Dec. 1 to get caught up on payments for a house that had been destroyed in the storm. They all had lost houses and watched the mail each day to see if similar letters would come for them.

The AFT and its members can play a big role in helping displaced colleagues, Ogle says. What started as "just another storm" has now become a non-stop battle to reclaim their lives. It’s a fight that goes on every day, every waking moment.

Hurricane Katrina may have leveled John Tuepker’s Long Beach, Miss., home, but it’s his insurance company that’s really wreaking havoc on his life.

"The problem is that insurance companies are calling it a flood and they’re not honoring their hurricane insurance," says Tuepker, a history teacher at Long Beach High School and past president of the Long Beach Federation of Teachers.

Fourteen houses on Tuepker’s beachfront block were flattened by the hurricane. And every one of them was owned by a member of his extended family, including his 90-year-old mother-in-law. Altogether, he says, 1,500 homes were demolished and just as many sustained severe water damage in the community of nearly 20,000 residents sandwiched between Pass Christian and Gulfport.

"My mother-in-law says the first thing she wants to do is build back," says Tuepker. "The rest of us are saying ‘whoa.’ We put our life savings into our house and aren’t collecting from insurance. If we rebuild and it is destroyed again, we would be impoverished."

Like many Gulf Coast homeowners, Tuepker’s mortgage company did not require flood insurance.

Tuepker and his wife Claire were fortunate to find a four-room apartment in nearby Gulfport. And Tuepker is back in the classroom. "They say a community can’t start to heal until the schools are open," he says. Just how long that healing process is going to take, however, also depends on insurance companies—or elected officials, who, prodded by their constituents, are willing to take them to task.

"It’s the money that we need. Housing has gotten so much more expensive since the storm because there is such short supply; and insurance companies are not honoring their policies. We really do need to get some attention. Our members are losing $200,000 to $300,000 of coverage," he says.