Katrina -- ‘He resurrected and so will we’

Three Huntington Beach residents are in Louisiana this week helping rebuild schools.

After Hurricane Katrina devastated areas in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida in August 2005, Santa Ana’s Mater Dei High School adopted two Catholic schools in Covington, La., which accepted students whose previous schools were destroyed by the storm.

Mater Dei sent money, school supplies and other items to help the displaced students, many of whom lost everything to Katrina, said Pamela Coe, the director of media relations for the Santa Ana Catholic school.

On Monday, Mater Dei sent 17 students to the area, including Surf City residents Marisa Van Winkle, Dana Nialis and Stephanie Strockis.

“I only know what I’ve seen on TV, and I think it’s really going to be an eye-opening experience to see and actually talk to people who have gone through it [Hurricane Katrina],” Marisa, 17, said before the group departed. “You hear about it on TV, but you don’t get the grasp of how devastating it is. You know, living in the sheltered life of Huntington Beach, I don’t even know what to expect.”

The students are staying with different host families in Covington. On Tuesday, the group toured New Orleans’ lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard’s Parish.

“It’s been pretty life-changing,” said Dana, 16, who was speaking from a cell phone outside Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Slidell, La. “The whole neighborhood is in a pile.”

Dana and Marisa said the church had no roof and was completely destroyed. The students will spend the next two days gutting houses and helping residents, Marisa said.

Although the 2006 hurricane season is looming ? it officially starts June 1 ? the students said people in Louisiana are optimistic.

“They have the greatest spirit about it ? If something like that happened to me, I’m not sure if I could have the same outlook,” Marisa said. “We drove by a church and it had a sign for Easter saying, ‘He resurrected and so will we.’ It’s amazing.”

Marisa said the host family she’s staying with may have to tear down their home after Friday.

“The house I’m staying in is completely intact and beautiful, but just from the wind it shifted off the foundation, so they might have to completely tear down the house,” she said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released the latest estimates of the cost of rebuilding and enhancing the area’s levees. About $2.5 billion will be used to raise levee heights and upgrade flood walls.

“There is so much debris,” Marisa said. “We were in areas where nobody is going to go back for a while. You see whole garages wiped out, windows and walls completely down. I didn’t even realize the extent of damage.”