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Early on Halloween morning, a power saw whined while the tapping of more than a dozen hammers resonated in the crisp fall air.
All the while, flannel-shirted, overalls-wearing workers swarmed over the parking lot at North Leo Mennonite Church in northeastern Allen County.
Jeff Blue buzzed among the crew, answering questions and giving instructions to new arrivals. But this was no ordinary construction job for the Fort Wayne building contractor.
For him, it was a labor of love.
“So many people up here think these hurricanes are over,” Blue says while carrying a piece of cut lumber for a fellow volunteer to nail into place. “There’s still years of work down there.”
Indeed, many in northern Indiana have forgotten Hurricane Ike, the storm that hit the Gulf Coast in September 2008 – barely three years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the area. But because of his involvement in Mennonite Disaster Services, Blue hasn’t.
That’s why he has spent the last year spearheading “A Castle for Craig,” a new approach to long-term hurricane relief developed by the denomination’s international aid agency.
For many years, the agency, based in Akron, Pa., has been sending volunteer construction crews to disaster areas to repair and rebuild houses. The group’s work lately has focused on the Gulf Coast, including Pass Christian, Miss., where workers completed 24 new houses and 15 major repairs. Katrina killed 22 people and destroyed about 90 percent of the homes in Pass Christian.
But now, Mennonite Disaster Services is taking another tack – building house frames at participating churches, then disassembling them and shipping them south to be reassembled on site.
North Leo, whose members have participated in other Disaster Services projects, is the first church in Indiana to participate in the program, which has provided eight homes since its start in 2007, says Scott Sundberg, agency spokesman.
The method, he says, allows for more volunteers to get involved in projects without having to take time off work and come up with money for travel and living expenses. The approach also provides more widespread visibility for relief efforts, he says.
Blue says the house being built in North Leo Mennonite’s parking lot is destined for a setting much different than northeast Indiana.
“Where this is going is Cajun country – it’s like the mecca of Cajuns,” says the 56-year-old, who has visited the site in Erath, La. It was in Erath where he met the home’s intended recipient, Craig Trahan, a 55-year-old paraplegic whose former home, which survived Katrina and Rita, was done in by Ike.
The home site is just a few feet above sea level, and the structure will be elevated on a mound to meet federal flood standards, Blue says.
“It’s sugar-cane country. This ground we’re building up on is a sugar-cane field,” says Blue, who plans to return when the house is reassembled, probably in December or January.
Sundberg says the homes built by Disaster Services are designed to withstand 150-mph winds for eight hours. When disassembled, their pieces – minus the roof – will fit in the back of a standard tractor-trailer.
After the house arrives in Erath, workers will place it on an already-prepared foundation, install the roof and work on the electrical wiring, plumbing and interior walls, floors and cabinetry.
The agency is working with Southern Mutual Help Association, a local group that screens clients, finds some contractors and helps obtain permits.
“They know their clients and they know the needs,” Blue says. “They could have gone to any church organization, not just MDS, but they chose MDS because it is very well-recognized in the Southern states for their housing (work) and the quality of workmanship.”
Reached by phone at his parents’ home in Lafayette, La., where he has been staying since Ike, Trahan says he was evacuated just before the storm hit because he lived south of what he calls “the magic line” – Interstate 14.
“I mostly watched it on TV,” Trahan says of the hurricane. “We never lost power; we were one of the fortunate ones. When they showed pictures flying over the certain areas, I thought, ‘Well, that’s that. We’re underwater.’ ”
Trahan has used a wheelchair since a trampoline accident just after his graduation from high school.
Unlike Katrina and Rita, Ike’s storm surge hit the Erath area nearly full force. “The water came up like a big swell, a tidal surge. The bayous and the ditches start filling up with water, and pretty soon the ground is flooded. With this one, it came up so fast,” he says.
When Trahan visited his home two weeks after the storm, “It was there, but the roof was torn off,” he says. “It was the tidal surge that did us in. It was all water inside.”
He says he felt “very grateful” that his home is being rebuilt. “I didn’t expect to have this at all, and I was amazed when they offered it to me. I said, ‘Please, yes, I want them to come.’ I heard they were very skilled workers and seem to know what’s going on.”
Blue says he first heard about the new Mennoite Disaster Services approach when he attended a national Mennonite conference where a group of young people assembled a house in a few days. He says he realized a house-building project would be a perfect fit for his church, which includes about a dozen members with construction-trade experience.
The church raised about $10,000 in one Sunday to start the project and sought donations or discounts on lumber and tools from area businesses, he says.
The 1,100-square-foot home is adapted to suit Trahan’s disability. The house likely would cost about $100,000 to build in Louisiana but should be completed for about $50,000, counting shipping, Blue says.
Fort Wayne’s Pathway Community Church and Central Church and St. Michael’s Catholic Church, Hicksville, Ohio, provided money and volunteers, he adds. Other area churches have indicated interest.
Today is the next workday at the church at 15419 Indiana 1. A barbecue-chicken fundraiser for the project is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the church. A dedication ceremony will take place at 1 p.m.
Volunteer Rich Liechty, 77, who has been in construction for 56 years, says working on the project “makes you feel good.”
While manning a power saw, he adds: “What this means to us is that we’re doing mission work that is restoring somebody’s life. Our catchphrase is that we are the hands and feet of Jesus.”
Jacob Leichty, 14, of Leo-Cedarville, working nearby, chimes in. “I think he (Trahan) will be really happy with the house. I think he’ll really enjoy it.”
