By Jon Hurdle

OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss., Feb 14 (Reuters) - At 6 a.m., the lights come on at Camp Victor, a base run by the Lutheran Church for volunteers helping with recovery efforts 2-1/2 years after Hurricane Katrina slammed into Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

I climb out of my wooden bunk and stand in the breakfast line with about 100 other volunteers from around the country.

We eat oatmeal or pancakes, fuel for a long day's labor on the thousands of homes that are still in need of repair long after one of the worst natural disasters in the United States.

My fellow campers are mostly middle-aged men from Lutheran churches in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa who have taken a week off work or away from retirement to cut lumber, paint walls or clear debris from the homes that were badly damaged or destroyed in the August 29, 2005 hurricane. The storm killed more than 1,400 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Some come with construction experience; others sweep floors or cook food; all are motivated by the goodwill that has brought more than 11,000 volunteers to the camp since the storm hit the Gulf Coast and collapsed the levees protecting nearby New Orleans from the sea.

The Lutheran Disaster Relief camp can take as many as 220 volunteers at a time. It is in a former garment factory in Ocean Springs, a pretty coastal town that seems to have been spared the worst of the storm.

I went as a Quaker -- albeit an aspiring one -- rather than as a journalist, and hoped the humanitarian work would be a rewarding experience for me as well as a practical help.

But long journalistic habits also led me to observe and record. I had time, given that I often stood aside while others with the necessary construction skills did the rebuilding work.

HELPING MISS HATTIE

On the first of our five days, our group of eight from a Quaker community near Philadelphia is sent to the home of "Miss Hattie," an elderly black woman whose roof, previously repaired after hurricane damage, has been hit again by a falling tree.

Lacking roofing skills, we are put to work chain-sawing the fallen tree into pieces and stacking them in the front yard.

We cut as much as we can but our small chain saw is finally defeated by the tree's girth, and the camp managers can't find a larger saw, so we break for a lunch of spaghetti and sweet potatoes in Miss Hattie's kitchen.

She is grateful, charming and glad of our company. But I wonder if clearing a tree from the yard of a perfectly habitable house is the most important thing in a state where some 13,000 hurricane victims are still living in trailers supplied by the much-maligned Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Later, I help deliver a new washing machine and two clothes dryers to two homes that have been renovated after flooding by hurricane-driven seawater.

Outside one house, a saucepan on a string dangles from a tree branch about 20 feet (6 metres) off the ground. The pan was probably blown there by the hurricane, the homeowner says.

In Waveland, west of Biloxi, it's plain that Katrina did a lot more than deposit saucepans in trees.

Leaving the highway, we drive down a muddy road into an apocalyptic landscape of broken trees, bare concrete pads where houses once stood, and some piles of debris.

On the cinder-block foundation of one house, a stack of belongings sits rotting in the rain. A tattered tarp, which presumably once covered these possessions, flaps in the wind.

Outside a nearby church -- which occupies what looks like a large shed -- is a hand-painted sign saying "Katrina was big but God is bigger."

It's a more cheerful picture in Pascagoula where volunteers are making good progress rebuilding a home in which floodwaters rose near to the ceiling of the first floor. The new one is built on 9-foot (2.7-metre) stilts to ensure no repeat.

The owner, 81-year-old "Miss Ruby" -- who lives in a trailer on the site -- cooks a fried chicken lunch for the volunteers.

As we eat in the warm January sunshine, she pulls out a karaoke machine and, balancing her high heels on a sheet of plywood, serenades us with renditions of classics including Patsy Kline's "Crazy" and Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."

Our efforts may be just a drop in the post-Katrina bucket but it's clear we've made one old lady very happy. (Editing by Michael Christie and Frances Kerry) (To read more Reuters Witness stories click here: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/reutersWitnesses)

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