Looking out of the window of her Westbrook apartment, Deborah Dickinson had two impressions of her first Maine winter, after she was forced from her home in Louisianna by Hurricane Katrina.

Dickinson, a native southerner, said she enjoys looking at the snow, but Dickinson said she is having trouble getting used to the ice and cold.

Dickinson said the reception she has received from Westbrook’s churches since she came to Maine has been anything but cold. She said people from churches of all denominations have gone out of their way to help her settle in and feel comfortable in her new home.

“All the churches, they have been more than helpful to me,” she said. “Before my furniture came, they made sure I had furniture and they made sure I had food and they made sure I had a washer and dryer. If it wasn’t for the churches, I wouldn’t have had any help.”

Rev. Ed DeLong of the Westbrook-Warren Congregational Church said the clergy from various Westbrook churches learned there were a number of families from the hurricane-devastated region living in Westbrook and they decided to do whatever they could to help them out. We “wanted to take them under our wing and help them with the transition of living in our area,” he said.

In addition to the Westbrook-Warren church, DeLong said Trinity Lutheran Church and Prides Corner Congregational Church provided assistance to Dickinson.

That help even extended to finding Dickinson a car so she could drive to her medical appointments. Dickinson said she was surprised on a recent day when members of DeLong’s church told her they were donating one of their cars to her.

DeLong said he spread the word among his congregation that Dickinson needed a car, and one family stepped forward. Dickinson said having a car has really helped her out, even if she is still concerned about driving in the ice and snow.

But Dickinson said a little ice and snow is a small price to pay to get out of hurricane-ravaged Louisiana.

Dickinson, a native of Charleston, S.C., had moved to Slidell to be with her family just two months before Katrina hit. She said she had experienced hurricanes before, but Katrina was like nothing she had ever seen. “It was horrible,” she said. “I’d been through Hurricane Hugo in Charleston, which was a bad one, but Katrina, it just flattened everything. It was like getting hit with a bomb.”

She said Katrina was one of the worst experiences of her life. “The water came up 26 feet,” she said. “The current was actually bringing dead bodies into my apartment complex.”

Unlike all of her neighbors, who fled their apartments, Dickinson stayed in her home because she was taking care of several animals – six cats and eight dogs. Some of the animals were hers, and some she rescued from the water. She stayed in her home until the local animal shelter could pick them up.

She said it was especially scary after the hurricane when looters tried to break into her apartment, only to be scared off by the dogs. “The animals raised such a ruckus, the looters just ran,” Dickinson said.

Police came by and she said she couldn’t leave because of the animals. “They knew I was committed to staying with the animals,” she said. She said police left her with some water and some food as well as an ax for protection. Thankfully, the looters stayed away from her apartment and Dickinson was never forced to use the ax.

After making sure the animals were safe, Dickinson went on to Walker, La., a town close to Baton Rouge. Then she flew to Portland to be with her sister, who was living in an apartment in Portland.

Dickinson said she chose to come to Maine to live with her sister because she has chronic obstructed pulmonary disease, a lung condition that requires specialized medical treatment, and the hospitals in Louisiana were no longer equipped to treat her.

She said many hospitals are still swamped with people with serious injuries from the hurricane, and some hospitals have been closed altogether because of the destruction from Katrina.

Once she settled in with her sister in Maine, Dickinson began to look for an apartment. She said she didn’t want to live right in the middle of a large city like Portland, and she fell in love with Westbrook when she saw the city.

“I loved the look of this town,” she said. “It just reminded me of a pretty little New England town. And so we started looking here for apartments.”

With some help from the Westbrook churches, Dickinson and her sister found an apartment in Westbrook Gardens. A recent visit to her apartment shows Dickinson is settling into her new home, though she still does have some unpacking to do.

Dickinson said she would never have been able to settle into her new home as well as she has without the help she received from churches.

DeLong said helping people in need is part of his church’s mission. He said seeing how his congregation has responded to help Dickinson has made him feel good. “It has been a really remarkable experience,” he said.

Sitting in her living room with her cat, Raggs, who also survived the hurricane, Dickinson said she is glad she decided to stay in Westbrook, even in the cold, snowy winter. “I’m not used to the snow, and I’m not used to being cold,” Dickinson said. “But it’s very pretty to look at.”

Dickinson Deborah Dickinson cuddles with her cat Raggs inside her Westbrook Gardens apartment. Dickinson, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, has settled in Westbrook with the help of the city’s churches.

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