George Buck could only marvel at the long lines of people receiving help recently at an American Red Cross distribution center in the St. Tammany Parish city of Slidell, La.

"You should tell the people in Hawai'i," Buck said yesterday via telephone interview, "that their donations are making a difference somewhere in Mississippi."

Buck, a Pacific Disaster Center emergency management specialist from Kihei, Maui, and PDC geospatial analyst Mike Napier are providing assessments from rural areas for search-and-rescue teams.

Buck also is collecting information for a historical database on Hurricane Katrina damage in St. Tammany Parish, on the northeast shore of Lake Pontchartrain. He said recovery operations are "progressing rapidly."

One reason the recovery has picked up speed has been the response by the American Red Cross. Through Wednesday, the Hawai'i chapter had raised $936,000 for the relief effort, said Coralie Chun Matayoshi, the chapter's CEO. She returned home Wednesday after having worked with the Red Cross in Louisiana since Aug. 30, a day after the storm engulfed the region.

"Our main mission was feeding and shelter," Matayoshi said. "If the Red Cross didn't have money, we wouldn't have been able to mobilize 85,000 volunteers. There would have been no medical supplies, food or shelter. I think the Red Cross turns compassion into action."

Matayoshi filed occasional reports to The Advertiser of what she was witnessing in Louisiana. Her final dispatch, filed just before leaving Monroe, La., earlier this week, read in part:

"What should have taken several years to plan was miraculously created in five days by dozens of volunteers with a single-minded determination to build a longer-term site for up to 3,100 displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors.

"The new Community Residential Center is a place they can call home — not for weeks or months, but for a year and perhaps longer. This is somewhere they can receive the best help available to rebuild their shattered lives.

"It takes a community to build a community, and that's exactly what is happening. Together, the American Red Cross, FEMA, school districts, Headstart, the Children's Coalition, military, sheriff, police, and other groups not only turned a vacated 300,000-square-foot State Farm Insurance regional headquarters into a home, but are now putting together a community based on cooperation, tolerance and love.

"Just days before the first 720 residents moved in, the old State Farm facility was buzzing with forklifts moving space dividers into place to establish separate living areas for families, single men, single women, couples and people with special needs.

"Electrical wires, television and phone systems were rerouted, and Internet-accessible computers for the residents and staff were set up almost overnight.

"Already this community within a building has an infirmary staffed by trained volunteer nurses working in shifts around the clock, a kitchen that serves three meals a day, a Wal-Mart pharmacy where residents can refill prescriptions temporarily free of charge, a 'store' that distributes bedding and toiletries, a cheery day care center, library of donated books and videotapes, an after-school study area and 72 toilets.

"Buses shuttle residents for showers at three local schools, to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get new IDs, and to Sunday church services.

"Representatives from school districts register displaced children at nearby schools, FEMA has a cache of laptop computers to register for financial assistance, mental health workers are in demand, and military police guard the entrance and exits. A bank and post office are being set up."

Matayoshi spent two weeks working primarily in Jefferson Parish and around the city of Kenner, whose residents were allowed to return home yesterday although they have been advised that electricity, water and sewer service have not been restored in all areas.

Reach Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.