WAVELAND, Miss. - "New Waveland Cafe" reads the large white sign prominently displayed under a tent where several volunteers are distributing water and lemonade.
Boxes nearby are overflowing with baby food, canned vegetables, peanut butter and other donated essentials at a one-stop shop where everything is free. Bottled water is stacked in towering piles, and the mound of diapers has grown so large that one volunteer said no more can be accepted because there is no room to store them.
By day's end, members of the Christian Life Church from Orange Beach, Ala.-who have organized the relief efforts at this makeshift restaurant and supply distribution center in a Kmart parking lot-will have offered assistance to hundreds of Hurricane Katrina victims in Waveland, Miss.
"We were in Hurricane Ivan last year. We took the brunt, so we know these things," said senior pastor Rick Long, who is also a chaplain for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "The needs of the people will last a long time."
After arriving in Waveland just days after the storm, members of the church have been serving thousands of meals every day, handing out truckloads of donated items and counseling hurricane victims.
"The first thing we wanted to do was come in and establish a place where they could get a meal, and then also we're distributing food and cots, air mattresses, blankets-stuff like that," Long said.
The church, which has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars running the cafe and the market, had been raising money to construct a new building, but it decided to use the funds to support the relief effort.
"If you can't be a church, building one's a lie," Long said. "We won't be finishing our building real soon, but we'll feel good. We'll be crowded, but we'll feel good about what we did."
After investigating several sites in Mississippi and Louisiana where the church might offer its assistance, Long heard about Waveland. The small, 6,500-person town is where the eye of the storm made landfall, but little media attention has been paid to it.
"It's not a glamour spot, it's not a New Orleans, it's not a Biloxi," Long recalled a colleague telling him about Waveland. "It's just a lot of hardworking people there, and they got a lot of water, they got several deaths, and they're just shut down."
Long's group was the first volunteer organization to arrive at what has become a full-service hurricane relief compound. On the opposite side of the parking lot from the church-run cafe and supply depot are North Carolina medical personnel-including several from Duke-operating a field hospital, and representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Red Cross volunteers and workers from an animal shelter are scattered around the area.
The church has provided bereavement and psychological counseling for some of the victims at the North Carolina hospital, which Long called a "godsend" that has brought hope into the devastated community. "Pastor Rick" checks in at the field hospital several times each day to offer his assistance.
The church has been serving 3,000 meals a day to victims and medical personnel alike since arriving. Trucks full of supplies-including food, clothing, bedding and other necessities-are arriving on a daily basis to keep the relief area fully stocked, and although it ran out of pillows Sept. 10, a volunteer assured victims more would be available the following day.
Most of the items being distributed are donated, but the church fronted $35,000 to buy an initial cache of supplies.
The whole operation, which Long said takes nearly 65 people to staff during the week and closer to 100 on weekends, will continue well into next year at a cost of approximately $20,000 per week. In the coming months, Long said he hopes volunteers will be able to deliver meals to victims' homes and that more "high-line clothing" can be offered to people in need.
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