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Firefighters Respond to Katrina's Call
By Jennifer Golson
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New Jersey firefighters Bill Lavin, Paul Palombi and Brian McGorty are greeted by the kindergarteners with a song about firefighters. |
Star-Ledger Staff
As it appeared in Star-Ledger on March 26, 2006
Their elementary school is in ruins, fenced off from the series of trailers where they now learn their ABCs. Their only playground is a nearby field, a dust bowl.
That's the setting for children at North Bay Elementary School in Bay Saint Louis, Miss., a coastal town of working-class families who found themselves at the epicenter of Hurricane Katrina.
Members of the New Jersey Firemen's Mutual Benevolent Association want to help the community regain some semblance of normalcy, by building a handicapped-accessible playground for the school.
A playground, rescue workers say, would be a real sign of recovery -- at least for the littlest members of the community.
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| Firefighter Brain Mcgorty looks on while 5-year-old kindergartner Marcey Barletter looks over playground equipment for their new playground. |
Since the natural disaster, New Jersey firefighters have made a series of contributions to assist communities in the Gulf region, from truckloads of food and clothing, to a massive $311,000 contribution to Save the Children. It was the largest donation a community organization has given the nonprofit agency toward Katrina efforts, said Jeanne-Aimee De Marrais, the senior program manager helping to lead the response.
They're not finished.
The firefighters have promised to build a playground for the children at North Bay, an elementary school Elizabeth firefighters have been linked to since children from that area sent them mementos of support after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Firefighters around the state are trying to raise thousands toward the $75,000 it will take to build the play area. Dozens of them will travel to Bay Saint Louis in April to build it.
Officials from the state FMBA have traveled to the region twice, and came back with vivid images of towns where there has been little change over the past six months.
"What we were blown away by was the fact that people were still living in tents. Children were still going to preschools in tents, and they were still using Porta Johns," said Bill Lavin, president of the state association and an Elizabeth firefighter.
In February they went to Pearlington, Miss., another rural community located a little farther inland, De Marrais said.
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| Save the Children's "Save, Spend & Share" money boxes are a fun tool to help kids organize a fundraiser and budget their savings at the same time. Click to purchase a Moneybox. |
Residents of Pearlington have turned the gymnasium into Pearl-Mart, where residents come for supplies. Lavin asked people what they needed, expecting to hear requests for air conditioners. Instead, they asked for basics, like cooking oil, flour, sugar and bread. And he promised to deliver.
"I didn't know at the time whether I'd be able to pull it off," Lavin said.
Within a month, they managed to secure enough donations to fill a tractor-trailer that Elizabeth firefighters helped load with $40,000 worth of food, including "luxuries" like coffee.
Firefighters in Elizabeth were shocked to hear that people are "living in what would be a Third World-country environment," said firefighter Pat Byrnes, president of FMBA Local 9. "We felt that if the government isn't doing all they can, at least the firefighters in the state of New Jersey can."
FMBA officials returned to the Gulf region to help unload the truck and meet again with the children at North Bay Elementary to help plan the playground.
"This goes back to the basic needs of the children," said Capt. Brian McGorty of North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue, who is a committee chairman with the state FMBA. "While everything else is crumbling around them, children need to have a place, a haven of some sort. It's a natural thing for children to play and to laugh, and if they don't have a place to do that, it's going to cripple them in more ways than one."
The firefighters are getting New Jersey children in on the act with "Pennies for Playgrounds," providing plastic pails to collect donations.
Save the Children and a third nonprofit, Mercy Corps, are contributing toward the cost of the playground.
On April 21, Save the Children will honor the state FMBA during a "Saturday Night Live" reunion show at the Union County Arts Center in Rahway, featuring New Jersey native Joe Piscopo, along with Phoebe Snow and Father Guido Sarducci, a fictional character made famous by comedian Don Novello. The profits will go toward the fundraiser.
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| Members of the NJFMBA visit with a kindergarten class about their playground project. |
Trenton firefighter Paul Palombi, the FMBA's central district vice president, will be among firefighters who return to North Bay next month. He remembers the promise he made to a second-grade boy there.
"You're a fireman?" the
boy said.
"Yes," Palombi said.
"You're going to build us a playground?" the boy asked.
"We're going to try," Palombi said. "He said 'Thank you,' and he went back to play with his friend. How can you not go back after a kid does that?"
For more information, contact the state FMBA office, (732) 499-9250 or FMBA9@aol.com
Donate to the Gulf Coast Hurricanes Recovery Fund for Children
