After seeing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast last week, Ruth Sass showed up in the Haywood Baptist Association office in Clyde distraught and wanting to help.

Sass was hit by the back-to-back flooding of the Pigeon River in Clyde last fall and watched her life crumble away from her.

“It’s awful. I guess I just felt for the people. Having been there, you know how it feels,” Sass said. “Initially you are concerned about what is happening and then you start to realize you have to sleep and eat and brush your teeth.”

Sass’ days alternated between scrubbing muck-covered possessions and filling out forms for government assistance. She had to buy a miniature file storage box just to keep track of it all.

“Since we had two floods we had to fill out everything twice. We had two FEMA identification numbers,” Sass said. “Keeping up with the paperwork was very hard. You don’t sleep. Your mind just whirls.”

Condensing her experience — her whole life being wiped away — to stacks of fill-in-the-blank forms was just “mind-boggling,” Sass said. But one of the hardest steps for Sass was applying for food stamps. As a school nutrition director in Henderson County, Sass helped parents on food stamps enroll their children for reduced school lunches.

“I never thought I would be in the position where I needed food stamps. It was very hard for me to go do that, but I finally decided to because I needed it,” Sass said.

If Sass has any advice for Katrina’s victims, though, it is to beware of false hope evoked by promises of aid from the government. The lofty speeches about helping victims and rebuilding communities sound great in the media but fall short on the ground.

Sass got only $10,200 from FEMA — $5,100 per flood to be exact — and $1,700 in rental assistance.

Sass, a member of Ratcliffe Cove Baptist Church, said it was the church community that provided her with the support to move on.

“Someone said if you need help go to the Baptist Church and sign up, so I did,” Sass said.

The Haywood County Baptist Association put Sass in a camper at Camp New Life immediately following the flood until she found a trailer to rent. Then the church gave her a sofa and bed and other necessary furniture.

The N.C. Baptist Men had soon corralled busloads of disaster volunteers, strangers who miraculously showed up on Sass’ doorstep. They pitched in to tote her trashed belongings to the curb, tore into her ruined walls with sledge hammers, took crowbars to her floor and generally demolished the inside of her house before building it back like new.

“I was so grateful for their help,” Sass said.

Now, one year later, Sass and hundreds of flood victims of Frances and Ivan are reliving their own horror as they watch the apocalyptic destruction of floodwaters play out before the nation.