COLUMBIA -- The volunteer group organized to help evacuees of hurricanes
Katrina and Rita passed the responsibility Monday to two nonprofit agencies
contracted through the state.
Lutheran Family Services and Family Service Center of South Carolina will
take over from South Carolina Cares, which has helped 2,050 evacuees navigate
their way through governmental red tape since it opened its Columbia center
Sept. 6.
After putting 600 people in hotels, helping 300 find homes, and serving
40,000 dinners and 25,000 lunches, South Carolina Cares will close its doors
Friday.
"This community had a tsunami of goodness that's incredible," said SC Cares
chairman Samuel Tenenbaum, who organized the effort with U.S. Rep. James
Clyburn, D-S.C., Columbia Mayor Bob Coble and University of South Carolina
President Andrew Sorensen. The center operated in a building owned by the
university.
About 90 percent of those helped were victims of Hurricane Katrina. Many of
those arrived on four planes flown in by the Federal Emergency Management
Agency. Evacuees from Hurricane Rita arrived in Columbia on their own, Tenenbaum
said.
"I think what we did was a national model," Coble said. He said he hopes
local groups can put the same energy toward helping Columbia's homeless.
Clyburn presented South Carolina Cares a check for $21,500 to help cover
costs the federal government will not reimburse. The money from private donors
was initially meant to pay for Clyburn's annual Carolina Celebration party. His
staff decided to forgo the September party and put the money instead toward
hurricane relief efforts. One company, which had donated $5,000 to the
celebration, asked for and received its money back, Clyburn said.
The state Emergency Management Division has signed a 90-day, extendable
contract with Lutheran Family Services, which will operate centers across the
state and subcontract with Family Service Center and other agencies to do the
case work, said division spokesman John Legare.
Centers will open in Columbia, Charleston, Beaufort and Greenville. A fifth
mobile center will travel across the state. The tentative opening day is Nov. 7,
Legare said.
The state has hired five temporary employees to act as liaisons with the
contracted companies.
The contracts will not cost the state anything, because the federal
government will reimburse whatever is spent, Legare said.
