The former youth pastor of a Camas church recalls helping people affected by Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans.
Ricky Ortiz coordinated the April 2-9, 2011, trip through Forward Edge International, of Vancouver.
The team of 12 volunteers from River Rock Church ranged in age from 17 to 74.
Ortiz said it caught everyone in the group off guard that the effects of the August 2005 hurricane were still “pretty bad” more than five years later.
The River Rock group helped reconstruct the house of Johnny Jackson Jr., a community activist in the Ninth Ward. They also helped rewire the house and installed insulation and sheetrock.
Ortiz, born of parents from Colombia and Puerto Rico, said the 11 Caucasian Americans he traveled with wrestled with racial tensions while they were in New Orleans.
“You could sense a resentment toward white people and vice versa,” he said. “People from the Northwest are not used to that. I talked about why it exists. It is not typically experienced in the Northwest. Cultural tension was the biggest obstacle [of the trip].”