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KATRINA’S WAKE
State doing its part to find jobs
Evacuees in S.C. building new lives
By JIM DuPLESSIS
Staff Writer
Only after trips back to post-hurricane Louisiana did evacuees Lonnie Lynch and Bernice Green realize their families would be making new homes and finding new livelihoods in South Carolina.
Both their families fled the New Orleans area because of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, killing at least 1,400 and forcing about 1.5 million residents to leave their homes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In New Orleans, the city’s pre-Katrina population of 462,269 has shrunk to about 189,000, according to reports.
Those thousands are scattered across the country. In South Carolina, their numbers are few, but they are beginning to find jobs as they establish themselves in their newly adopted home.
An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people came to South Carolina after Katrina. As of Tuesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was serving 3,542 people in the state, including 621 in Richland County.
“The largest concentration is here in Columbia,” said John Legare, spokesman for the S.C. Emergency Management Division. “They have nowhere to go back to.”
Officials said they don’t know how many refugees have found or are seeking work in South Carolina.
But increasingly, South Carolinians will have new co-workers who have overcome daunting challenges to find new jobs after fleeing the hurricane.
Green, one about 130 New Orleans evacuees flown to Columbia on Sept. 7, landed with little more than a change of clothes. Her car was destroyed in the flood; her rented home was wrecked.
“When you’re in a strange city and you don’t have a car, can you imagine trying to find work?” Green asked.
Intervention made a difference. In her case, it was BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina. The S.C. insurance company paid to lodge many early arrivals, and found jobs for Green and several others. City officials and others helped arrange shuttles and other transportation.
By December, she and her fiance, Eugene Dabney, had found jobs. Dabney, who had been a highway construction worker in New Orleans, found a job as a dishwasher. Green and about a dozen other evacuees were hired by BlueCross, assembling packages of forms and brochures for people making health care claims.
She makes $8.50 an hour, slightly less than she made in New Orleans taking care of the elderly in their homes.
Some who chose to come to South Carolina had a high school education or less. Others were teachers, nurses and city employees, said Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, who helped organize local efforts to make good on the city’s offer to care for evacuees.
Some came to South Carolina outside that effort. The state was a natural refuge for Lynch, a 57-year-old factory maintenance scheduler. He grew up in Bishopville, and had family sprinkled across the area, including a brother-in-law who worked in Lugoff at the Invista nylon plant (formerly owned by DuPont).
Skilled maintenance workers like Lynch are hard to find, Invista officials said. After his brother-in-law mentioned Lynch’s plight to a maintenance manager, it wasn’t long before Lynch was cobbling together a resume that his sister typed for him. That was in October: He still had a job near New Orleans and wasn’t sure he wanted to leave.
Lynch had worked maintenance for most of his life outside South Carolina. In 2000, he moved from Cincinnati to Slidell — a town across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans — to handle maintenance for a Folgers coffee plant.
The Folgers plant escaped serious damage, but Lynch’s rented house was flooded, and he lost almost all his belongings.
Of the 1,500 people who worked at Folgers, Lynch estimated more than half have left. “It’s not a decision easy to make. For a lot of them, it’s made for them because there’s nothing left.”
Lynch’s family could have gone to live with relatives in other states, but they decided to stay in the Midlands. Invista hired Lynch in early December.
Unlike Lynch, Green stayed in New Orleans through the storm with her fiance and her 7-year-old daughter, Bernita.
“We didn’t think it would be that bad,” she said. “We were lucky to ride the thing out without losing our lives.”
Green’s family sought shelter at a church in their Algiers neighborhood. Rising water forced them to leave the church and walk in chest-high water to higher ground. After several days, they were evacuated and boarded a passenger jet that landed in Columbia.
Green and other New Orleans natives still felt the pull of the Big Easy. In November, she traveled back home to retrieve belongings from her family-rented duplex.
She picked through the soggy remains. She found the high school diploma of her other daughter, who is 21-year-old, and a few photos.
“I had to see how bad it was. Sometimes, you have to go back to really get closure,” she said. “I can’t go back to New Orleans because New Orleans is not ready.”
“I feel like it’s gone.”
Reach DuPlessis at (803) 771-8305 or jduplessis@thestate.com
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